


After

by NadiasGhost



Category: Original Work
Genre: BUT i can tell you it's hella rad, Badass Ladies, Epic, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I know nobody reads original works on AO3 but maybe give it a read and ill love you forever, I love all these characters to bits and pieces and trust me you will too, M/M, character death!!, god is a woman, modern-set epic, scifi, some supernatural stuff is afoot and I can't tell you what it is yet bc that would be a spoiler, tentitive apocalypse, tw for death of a sibling, tw: for non-con kiss/ kissing, you'll.... you'll see what I mean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 58,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NadiasGhost/pseuds/NadiasGhost
Summary: The following is a collection of records-- journal entries, letters, and audio recording-- discovered together. And from these we can only guess at what happened to the survivors.... In The After. There's no truth I can provide you with, only these clues. Keep in mind bias, and the emotion which laces these stories, when you decide who to believe about the events that lead to The End.**This is my summary for more quote-on-quote "proffessional" sites that I've posted this work on, but I promise you guys, this story is just a bunch of lovable dorks trying to navigate a whole lotta supernatural and mythical nonsense, and you're gonna absolutely fall in love with these characters.





	1. To Introduce Our Heros

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends! I know nobody reads original works on AO3 lmao bUT I'm really psyched for this project in general so I'm posting it here! I have cross posted "After" on a few other sites that are more for original works than fanfic, both under the pen name "Nadia'sGhost" AND "dahlia-claire" (wow my real name, yall can stalk me now lol). Note: I have registered After with the US Writer's Guild before posting it online, so don't worry about anyone stealing my writing, I have proof that it's mine so it's safe :) 
> 
> aNYWAYS, I figured some of you on here know and even like my writing style, so here's the first chapter of a project im really loving right now-- any comments and thoughts on it would mean so much to me and be so appreciated, tons of love for all of you <3

God,

Before you kill her, there are some things you need to know about Darcy Adela Adara. Which, I know, you supposedly know everything, and I suppose you can probably foresee her being the last human alive, what with everything that’s happened. Well, I foresaw that too, buddy. Which is why I’m writing this. (Is calling God “buddy” blasphemy? I’ll cross it out either way.)

Darcy Adara is the most amazing human to ever live, and that is a totally unbiased opinion. Not the charismatic, perfect, too-good-for-you kind of amazing, she’s never been that. She, well…. She’s indestructible. If this is the end for humanity, you’re gonna have to get creative with Darcy. Nothing can hurt her, not fire or ice or blade or blame.

I met Darcy a long time ago, back when she had a thing for black hoodies and always carried a little neon orange fanny pack of survival essentials. (Though she still has a thing for black hoodies, and if she walked into school the day before the Wave in a neon orange fanny pack the halls would still part for her and Ace Diesel would still sidle up to her and ask her if she wanted to do something reckless.)

But the day I met her I was 10, and she had just turned 11; I was new to the neighborhood and the air was hot with the thick buzz of August on Vancouver Island. She stopped in her explorations, wiping dirty hands onto her pant legs, and peered up at me in the second floor window to say matter-of-factly, “you know, somebody can be attacked by wolves at anytime of day.”

She was prepared for any sort of of disaster. Earthquakes, lightning storms, radiation leaks, tornadoes, hurricanes, rabid wolves. Not zombie apocalypses however, to my immense disappointment, but also relief, as she quickly informed me the idea of a zombie-like virus “wasn’t very probable at all.”

For the rest of August the year I was ten I would catch glimpses of her. She didn’t like being distracted, and I hadn’t ever had many friends at the time, so her elusiveness didn’t bother me.

She called me “Disney”.

I’m not in love with her. Although many people hasten to jump to that conclusion. She’s my best friend and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, and that’s a little like a different kind of being in love.

2 weeks before we started high school, we were inseparable. And on one still blushingly hot August night much like the one I’d met her on, Ace Diesel stood outside her bedroom window with an iPod touch and blasted a horribly average romantic song off the radio. It was only 7:30, and the sun was just beginning to set. (I suppose even Ace Diesel had a curfew, back then). As the light continued to fade from the sky he let her drive his dad’s car around an empty lot and told her something I thought was beyond his mental grasp:

“Lighten up, buttercup. You can’t spend your whole life waiting for the world to end.”

Despite the fact that I’d been telling her that for 4 years, this time, with the cutest boy in eighth grade and a stolen honda civic, it stuck.

Darcy had always been the type of girl to drive a stolen car at sundown. To live like the world was ending. With Ace, she settled into a different kind of crazy than before. She got a nose ring, went to parties, earned a high school reputation in freshman year, purely because she could.

And despite that I was so happy for her. She was Darcy, and she deserved everything. Happiness. To never again worry about an apocalypse that was never going to happen.

Back then she may have turned into a happy, functioning member of high school society, but now you’re dealing with the stubborn girl who warned me about wolf attacks. A girl who knew somewhere deep inside herself that this was coming, long before any of us did.

She’s got some gene in her that cried out a warning when we were 10 and 11. She may not be totally or completely human, but she’s the best we as humanity have to offer, God.

Sincerly,

Joshua (Disney) Duncan

**

Chapter One:

[The following has been transcribed from an audio recording, discovered alongside several paper and pen journal entries in a variety of handwritings, including the letter above. This author has very good reason to believe the two voices heard belong to one Hanna Anderson and one Darcy Adara.]

[Click]

[Recording]

Hanna: Just…. Don’t start from the beginning. I don’t think I can hear it again.

Darcy: Where do I start then?

Hanna: ….When did you first see…. Any of it.

Darcy: Any of what?

Hanna: Any of the…. not normal.

….

Darcy: What, any of the not normal besides the Wave, which would be the glaringly obvious answer? Alright, fine, I don’t really want to talk about the Wave right now either. Let’s see…. It was the first night…. After. We were huddled in the school gym, on those big mats they use for track and field. We had light from several phones, but the overheads were shot, and the gym was big and echoing.

That’s when we heard them. A shrieking banging on the roof, like a legion of them up there just dragging sticks across the whole length of it. And shouting. Some of it was human, undeniably so, and it echoed back and forth, but mostly forth, as if they were moving past us. And there was screeching, most certainly not human, high pitched like air out of a punctured tire.

There was a rushing sensation. It felt like standing on the edge of a frigid cliff, staring out into wilderness and nothingness and open air. It felt like the pull in your gut at the very top of any mountain or building, the wiggling itch to jump. The shouts and screams and RUSH receded, opposite from the direction they’d came in, but were replaced with a BANGING on the roof, followed by an animalistic hiss. BANG, BANG, HISS. BANG, BANG, HISS.

I suppose at that point we’re were all huddled in the gym in terror of mysterious ocean monsters, and we still managed to be surprised by mysterious ocean monsters, you know?

Nobody spoke for a stretch of time, and when the silence was broken, it was Rose who whispered, “animal or machine?” It was an animal, it had to be, I’d felt the way it slithered in my chest by the noise it made, and it made me cold. “Machine,” I answered quietly, “has to be. There’s no animal alive that makes that kind of noise.”

There was another long moment of silence, as nobody dared debate me, but I felt it in their stares. “C’mon, guys,” I continued, “this school was apparently built to withstand…. Y’know.” I motioned to the stark gymnasium walls, implying the water beyond. “We just have to trust that it’s also built to withstand whatever the hell that is.”

“Hell is a bad word,” Acacia mumbled softly. “Government boat?” Alberto suggested in his halting english. I paused. “I…. Don’t think so. I know Mr. David said he was going for help but…. That’s too fast to be plausible. Whatever is up there is trying to break in the roof, which would flood us, which wouldn’t be very helpful. I think we can rule them out as our rescue team.” Acacia clung to Alberto’s sleeve. “Then what is it?” Daisy hissed.

BANG, BANG, HISS.

I, Darcy Adara, always had to have the answers, which is to say I made something up whilst flying by the absolute seat of my pants. “If it’s the Government, then they’re on top of it, they’ll figure out how the hell the school opens. If it’s bad guys, we don’t know that they know anything, okay? We just have to hope they can’t figure out how to get in. Either way, we should relocate.”

So we got up, and dragged the mats out of the gym and down the hall and into the library. I closed the doors to the gym behind us and Disney found hockey sticks and athletic tape and we barricaded the hell out of both gym entrances once everybody was out. Obviously I was hoping as much as the next girl that somebody descended out of the ceiling and told us what was going on. But when they did I’d be waiting with an aluminium baseball bat from the athletics storage room and a good solid binding on the outside of the gym doors, while they were trapped inside as the salt water level rose.

I collapsed onto a mat in the library as dawn would’ve been breaking through the windows on a normal day.

**

“How long? Until the Wave goes away?” Was the conversation that seemed to be taking place when I woke up. Apparently Acacia had asked, and though we could but speculate, there wasn’t much else to discuss. CrashTest Lee was nursing a half-empty bottle of vodka and Rose was pouring juice, presumably school-kitchen-juice, into a metal water bottle.

“So somebody finally works up the courage to break into the kitchens storage room and they bring back juice for mixers?” I asked, rolling out of bed. There was a blanket on me. Rose blushed, hugging her bottle of juice to her chest. “You okay?” Came Disney’s ever quiet voice, hand on my shoulder. “How’s the gym,” I asked in response, “has anybody checked?”

I took silence as a cue to continue, “Lee, where did you even GET that?” He shrugged, not meeting my eyes, never meeting my eyes. “Ace Diesel’s locker?” he huffed, but it was more of a question, testing both the metaphorical waters and my patience, “kid never shut up about what he had in that thing.”

Oh and Lee didn’t know how angry that particular name would make me. “I think the wait time on a dead man’s belongings is more than twenty four hours,” I hissed, pushing past him and out of the library. Disney got up and followed me.

The BANG, BANG, HISS, was still there, making its way down and through the roof.

“What do you think it was, really,” Disney asked as we walked a hall we’d walked many times before, in better conditions. I looked at him wearily, still rubbing sleep from my eyes. “What was?”

“The Wave,” he clarified.

“Why should I know,” I snarked tiredly, mostly out of habit.

“Because you’re Darcy Adara, you have disaster down to a science.”

I stared at him. “Disaster is a science.”

We’d reached the gym. “Was this, though?” he asked, “science, I mean.”

**

“This wasn’t how normal earthquakes happen,” I started, “the biggest recorded earthquake--”

CrashTest cut me off with a comment about us already knowing this information.

“The tsunami that occurred in quick succession to the quake,” I pressed, “couldn’t have been caused by it. Even with a quake of that magnitude, we should’ve had fifteen, twenty, twenty five minutes before we saw ocean.”

“Oh yes, we are indeed seeing ocean,” CrashTest slurred.

The kids in the library snapped their heads back and forth between the two of us. ”Either there were two separate, freak events, OR the Earthquake we experienced wasn’t caused by tectonic shifting, but rather some other form of--”

“Excuse me, Queen Adara, but who appointed you ruler of this fine nation?” CrashTest complained testily. “Let’s hear your prevailing theories then,” I retorted, unfazed.

He thought for a moment, then smiled viciously at me and drawled, “aliens. Crash landed their ship in the Pacific, causing the Wave.”

“We would’ve SEEN the ship,” Rose countered, while I contented myself rolling my eyes. Jordan spoke up, suggesting a nuclear bomb may have gone off. Possible? Yes. Plausible….? “More plausible than alien invasion,” I allowed.

“If a bomb went off in the Pacific it could’ve triggered the tsunami,” Jordan pressed. Alberto offered the idea of: “Angels. Fighting in heaven.” “What does that have to do with water, or the ocean?” I countered. He nodded, and seemed convinced by my one question.

“We can rule out a true Act of God,” Rose contributed, “because he wouldn’t have saved a bunch of dumbasses like you.”

There was a long pause of no other forthcoming theories. Then Disney voiced the obvious question: “what are the chances Mr. David made it to safety, and is bringing help?” They all seemed to be waiting on me. “You were there,” I replied quietly, “by the time the Wave hit he was probably just getting to his car. There’s no way to know if he’s still alive.”

They fell quiet. Acacia looked close to tears and I abruptly remembered the kid presence in the room.

“We could literally be the last people on earth,” Jordan mumbled. “We need to send something up there, they don’t know we’re down here,” Alberto agreed. “Hold on now.” I asserted, raising my voice, “the pressure out there could be enough to instantly kill, we have no idea what it’s like, OR how deep under we are. Plus, the double doors at the front are our only reinforcement, we can send something or somebody out ONCE but then nothing can come back in.”

“Would you prefer the title President of the Remainder of Humankind?” CrashTest asked lazily, “or Princess?”

“She didn’t say that!” Disney all but yelled back, “she just said maybe don’t throw yourself into the crushing void of the ocean just yet. Although personally, Lee, I wouldn’t mind if it was you who went, then at least--”

Daisy growled, rolling her eyes in frustration, “Shut up! This isn’t helping!”

**

What I really needed was an internet connection. If I could find out who had built our water-proof school, I could find out who had known that this was coming. Because presumably they were our best hope at finding out what the hell was going on.

Our school was relatively new. It had been built when I was a kid, and it was the “nice” school in town. You were lucky to live in area for it. Unfortunately however, the office was a mess. The shaking had turned over desks, and toppled filing cabinets. “Where would I keep a file labelled ‘hey, this guy built our school to withstand the apocalypse and here’s his phone number for your post apocalyptic uber to the ultimate bunker,’” I mused aloud, unaware that I sounded like an idiot. You would’ve thought whoever bothered to Wave-proof us would’ve left some instructions, but no.

“James Rochester.”

I turned around in surprise, knocking over half of the accountant’s desk toys and probably squeaking in terror. Nice. “James Rochester,” Daisy repeated from the doorway, then clarified, “he built the school. I remember his name, because he was the one guy my mom truly hated in her entire life. Him and everything he stood for. The dude wasn’t even Canadian. Just some multimillionaire American living easy out of Florida and funding foreign stuff for the hell of it. For his image, she said, must’ve been.”

“Right, because you and Rose, your mom was--” I stopped and for once reconsidered the stupid thing I was about to say. “The local hippie named Destiny?” Daisy finished sarcastically for me, “let’s get one thing straight Adara. If we’re having an election, yes, I’d vote for you. But you don’t get to call every shot, okay? You don’t know the first thing about any of the rest of us. What Rose said about God not saving a bunch of dumbasses like us, I agree. I would not have chosen to save us.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I confessed, “if finding a commonality between the eight of us is a priority for you, that might give us a clue as to “why us”, at least for those of us who believe in the divine.” Daisy shrugged, “I don’t really, but I also don’t really believe in the end of the world so there you have it.”

“What more do you know about James Rochester?” I asked, sitting amongst the desk toys on the ground. She sat with me.

“He’s a businessman. He invented SeaTo,” she began. “He runs a water purification company?” I asked incredulously. “.... Yes.” “Why would he want to help kids on the West Coast of Canada?” I asked. She shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to save innocent lives while he knew he could.” “In Canada? Why not in Florida?”

She shrugged again, then mumbled, “do you think the Wave has reached Florida too?” “It hasn’t RECEDED yet,” I reasoned, “logically speaking, it should’ve gone around the world twice by now, so who knows.”

“It’s not moving,” she whispered, looking up, “not in or out. I can hear it, and I can feel

it.” “I can feel it too,” I whispered back.

“Doesn’t the earth only have a certain amount of water in the biosphere?” She asked.

I frowned. I hadn’t thought of that. I’d spent most of Biology class snoozing or joking around with…. “Maybe it pulled water from the atmosphere,” I responded. I was thankful that we’d long moved past the alien theory. “The atmosphere is a part of the biosphere,” Daisy sadly informed me.

We stood, and made our way back to the Library.

Believe it or not, there wasn’t much information on either Rochester or SeaTo in the school library. If you’ve ever been forced to research something in a school library, without the use of internet, you’ll know that it is nothing like a TV research montage. Especially if you’re looking for information on a man with no real historical importance.

Yet.

Disney came to help. Rose was too drunk to be of much use. Eventually Jordan came, mostly for moral support. Alberto looked on sheepishly and Acacia tried to explain in Spanish to him what was going on. I walked over to where CrashTest was rifling through books assuming he was planning to help me in order to help the greater good. “Peace?” I asked, leaning against a bookshelf. “Go screw yourself, Adara,” he responded without inflection and without looking up.

“Seriously?” I asked, staring daggers into his bent over head. “I said--” I cut him off, “yeah, I heard you.” I didn’t get his end game. Survival? Sure that made sense but why research the same thing as everybody else and not work together?

Disney was looking at the water cycle-- if water can be formed, tsunamis and how tsunamis work. Daisy was researching folklore on tsunamis, waves, ocean spirits and eventually Noah’s Ark, (though she wrinkled her nose). When Alberto saw the word bible he started speaking enthusiastically at her in Spanish.

Despite the fact that researching earthquake zones and Poseidon was of zero used to us and I knew so, I was very happy to have convinced them to spend the afternoon in the library. It was 10 steps up from looting and drinking and burning and at that point I convinced myself that every other person in that school was of no use to me and no use to anything.

I sighed and leaned into the nearest bookshelf to stay upright.

As I did there was an echoing thump of something that weighed at least as much as a car from the direction of the gym.


	2. Hanna

[a journaled account of proceedings written by Hanna Anderson]

I was feeling nostalgic, the day it happened. I was having one of those days where you push yourself to appreciate every little thing you take for granted, but in the end get swept up in how big of a picture those little things are a part of, and in turn forget all about your promise to be more grateful. One of those days where there’s something in the air, a glimmer of a new, mature sort of peace through understanding that’s just out of your reach. One of those days where you struggle so hard to be present in your own life that you end up feeling detached and a little frustrated, floating through how big and complicated everything truly is. 

I’d dropped Eli off at school, kissing him on the cheek as I usually did. He hopped out of the creaky passenger door of the truck with a bright smile and a wave back to me. He bobbed away towards his friends, his backpack bumping happily on his tiny shoulders. 

I dropped Caroline off next, and leaned over to kiss her on the top of the head out of some old habit. She scowled at me and pushed me back into the driver’s seat forcefully. “Have a good day! Call me when you want a ride home from soccer!” I called after her, unfazed. 

“Whatever,” she mumbled, bright red as she shouldered her rucksack over one shoulder, slamming the door behind her. 

Right. Middle school. I was embarrassing. I’d have to work on that.

Dropping my siblings off at their respective schools was routine for me, and I felt calm, if slightly out of it, as I pushed the truck on towards my school. 

I pulled the truck into my school parking lot, into one of the good spots, my favourite in fact. Far enough away and shaded enough by a tree that nobody could make eye contact with me through the classroom windows, but close enough that I wouldn’t have to walk a long way. I leaned back in my seat and sighed, breathing in the old truck: the gasoline, the old fabric seats, the hum of the radiator still grinding away, the clunk of the doors as they settled back into place after driving. 

I should get out. I had things to do before the bell rung and I had to go to biology. But I didn’t want to brave the cold just yet, to shuffle into the hallways of noisy lowerclassmen and preoccupied upperclassmen. Though I was a senior this year, I was still short, and I didn’t make a business of having my face known to any of the rest of my graduating class, and thus I was still pushed out of the way when the hallways were crowded. 

And the hallways were always crowded before first bell. 

My phone buzzed, and I ignored it, focusing on the smell of gasoline and the radiator. It buzzed again and I flicked it onto silent. If I started checking my messages now, I’d never get to Biology. 

I hopped out of the truck, locked the doors with a clunk clunk, and sighed, heading towards the school. 

The few hours of school I actually attended that day are only burned into my brain now because of how mundane they were. How normal. 

When I heard that Japan was underwater, I ran from the classroom back to my truck. Students flooded the parking lot. Dimly, from the school, I could hear the fire alarm scream. Whether it had been a teacher or kid who’d pulled it, I don’t know. I locked the doors to the truck decisively, and curled up behind the wheel, brain whirring. 

Caroline. Eli. 

I punched in Caroline’s number by memory and bounced anxiously as it rang. Outside the truck, some kid was being hauled out of his own vehicle, a senior guy stealing his keys, and urging his friends in. Somebody yanked on my door, but the lock held. I looked worriedly for the kid on the ground, he disappeared for a second, and when I finally relocated him, I chewed my lip. 

His used looking Toyota screeched out of the parking lot, and he watched it go.

If I opened the door for him to climb in I risked somebody else coming in and throwing me out. He looked around, panicked, and scrambled to his feet to avoid being run over. As I bit down hard on my lower lip and hovered an unsure finger over the button to unlock the doors, one of the English teachers screeched to a halt beside him in her mini-van, throwing open her passenger door. 

I’d had Mrs. Shelling as a ninth grade english teacher. She’d always been too timid to keep the noisy kids at the back of the class in check. I watched in shock as she peeled away and over the sidewalk, avoiding the crowded exit to the student lot, the mystery boy buckled in safely. 

Finally my cell stopped ringing as the call was connected. I locked the door again, redundantly, and it clunked solidly. I buckled myself in roughly, turning the ignition key. “Hanna?” Caroline asked in disbelief. It was loud on her end, people shouting in the background. 

“Where are you?” I demanded, “I’m coming to get you!” 

“No! I’m with dad!” She shouted back. 

“What do you mean you’re with dad?” I yelled back, propping the cell between my shoulder and ear and steering in a dangerous circle out of the lot the way Mrs. Shelling had gone. The truck spun off the curb and onto the pavement of the road with a crunch, and I swerved in a far arch to avoid a cluster of students.

“I’m with mom, and dad, and Eli!” She shouted back. Behind her I could hear the commanding voice of my father, and the insistent whine of my brother. 

“Where?” I demanded again, “where are you going?”

“To church!” Caroline yelled. 

“What do you mean to church?!” If the problem was water, as in, a tsunami, our church was damn near the lowest geographical location for miles around, and it made no sense to head for that side out town. Nevertheless, I switched directions, pulling a wildly illegal U-turn in the old truck even as it protested. I only drive cautiously when my siblings are in the car. 

Now I was driving in the opposite direction of all the other fleeing cars. 

Eli was loud enough in the background, presumably from the backseat of my parent’s car, that I heard him. “Why can’t Hanna come?!”

I ran a red light, as there was a continuous stream of cars going the other direction on my left, keeping the intersection wide open for me. 

I caught parts of my father’s response: “I’ve already told-- Hanna’s not-- I need you to-- okay?”

Hanna’s not…. what?

“Caroline?” I asked. The phone disconnected, the last noise it carried through was Caroline’s surprised yelp. 

I threw the phone onto the bench seat beside me, and floored it. 

That’s when the shaking started. 

The truck, already the shakiest vehicle to ever exist, swayed violently side to side on the road. I hit the brakes, some part of my brain identifying the shaking sensation as an earthquake. An earthquake of car shaking magnitude in Washington D.C.?

One of the cars in the opposite lane swerved, and I saw the glint off their front windshield blink at me, before they slammed into the side of the truck, and my face abruptly met the steering wheel. 

**

It was too dark. 

I was in the truck, that much I could tell, by the smell of the gasoline, the old fabric seat under me, the cut of the seatbelt in it’s familiar place, the hum of the radiat-- The truck was silent, dead. There was no hum, and I was freezing. 

I blinked the world back into focus. 

For a moment I could barely make out my own hands, there was so little light, but as my eyes adjusted, I located them on the steering wheel. There was…. Nothing outside. 

No, not nothing. Water. Black water. Water that was the absolute bottom of the ocean, nature documentary about the Marianas Trench, abysses of the sea dark. I was so cold, my fingers hurting as I flexed them. 

The sinking feeling wasn’t just fear settling into the bottom of my stomach, the truck was actively sinking further and further into the inky blackness. There were no shapes out in the deep, just black and black and black. I struggled to unbuckle the seat belt with my frozen hands. There was blood on the seat, and it must’ve been mine, but I wasn’t sure where I was bleeding from. The door on my side was a mangled mess, crumpled in half. 

But somehow, it was so crushed into itself, that it wasn’t letting in any water. 

Finally the seatbelt unclipped and I scrambled towards the glove department. We had…. We had…. My fingers found the window breaking lead bar under piles of useless papers. I looked out the window at the nothingness, looking up. 

The whole truck should’ve been crushed by the pressure now. I could barely see the light of the sun, what seemed like miles above me. There was no way I could get the the surface without breath. 

Then again, what did I know about judging distances underwater, I’d only been to the ocean a handful of times, and I’d definitely never been scuba diving in my seventeen years of existence. My jaw clenched as the black nothingness awned above me. I’d never gone scuba diving, and I’d made a point to avoid trips to the ocean because deep water scared the hell out of me. 

It was still freezing, and my breath was fogging up the passenger seat window as I pressed my face too close, and I was still sinking farther and farther from the surface. 

I took in as much air as my lungs would allow and then slammed the lead bar into the windshield. Water rushed into the car, and air rushed out; the pressure changing with a sickening suction sound, and I was crushed against the bench seat. 

I opened my eyes into the crush of-- definitely salt-- water, and pushed off the fabric seat with my legs. The broken glass of the window streaked red bloody lines down my torso and legs and the water behind me in the truck cab pooled into a dark red. 

I began kicking. 

It didn’t truly feel like going up, direction had become meaningless, but I prayed the faint light was indeed the sun, and that I was going towards air. 

I took off my hoodie, and kicked off my canvas shoes, the weight of them too much, and they sunk away into the darkness after my truck. 

It was taking too long. Some of the air had been knocked out of my lungs by the initial pushback of the ocean pressure, and now my head was faint.

My vision tunneled, my head becoming more and more clouded. My kicks seemed weaker, and my hands above me didn’t really look like my hands. 

The sunlight was dimming, and I wasn’t even halfway there. 

No. 

Bullshit. 

I kicked again, with everything left in the legs that didn’t really feel attached to me, and forced my eyes open. My vision plumed with black, like dark flowers blooming in front of the light.  
From some unhelpful corner of my brain came the voice of my twelfth grade biology teacher, droning on about voluntary and involuntary apnea…. If excess CO2 is not removed through the lungs it accumulates in the blood. The consequent rise in CO2 tension and drop in pH result in stimulation of the respiratory centre in the brain which eventually cannot be overcome voluntarily. However, despite how designed the human body is to seek out that gas exchange, when one is underwater the brain simply will not allow one to open one’s mouth until past the point of unconsciousness….

I sucked in a breath. 

It was instinctual, thought it shouldn’t have been, but as water filled my lungs I began to cough it out in horror. 

My eyesight cleared. 

I could breath. 

I sucked in another breath, greedily, tasting every bit of the salt, feeling the water fill my throat, my lungs. 

It wasn’t right, it didn’t feel right, but I kicked again, reaching up with my hands. 

It took longer than it should’ve to reach the light, but finally I broke the surface of the water, still gasping for some reason. I pedaled my legs in place in a frantic sort of way, throwing up every bit of salt water inside of me, and then coughing until I felt the retch from the pit of my stomach to the top of my head. 

Finally I could breath air again. I swiped hair, and then water out of my eyes. 

There was nothing. No mountains, no skyscrapers, no shoreline. Just water. 

**

Please, God, anyone. I begged. 

And then they showed up. 

Then I begged. Please, God, anyone but them. 

Because the only other souls who seemed to be alive out in the expansive ocean that never ended, seemed to be…. Well…. Not entirely human. 

I was floating on my back, trying to regain the strength to continue swimming. I was going-- or at least I was praying I was going-- west, by watching the direction of the setting sun. If I swam in one direction, I had to run into something. 

They appeared from afar like jumping fish, breaking the surface and creating far off splashes. 

But then I felt more than visually noticed the movement of the dark shapes underneath me. 

I yelled, but-- having nowhere to go-- stared down at what could only be a pack of very fast moving, very deformed…. Whales? Nothing else that swam in our ocean could be that big. But…. Whales breathed oxygen and swam near the surface. 

As I was preoccupied with the horrible shadows beneath me, the leaping shapes approached. 

A very human voice laughed. 

I whirled towards them, hoping it was some kind of strange government rescue party. 

Yes, back then I was very optimistic. I used words like “government rescue party”.

As they came closer and I saw they were neither animals or ships, I thought they were people, swimming in the water. 

But then I saw their faces. 

The Custodi look nearly human. But they’re too pale. Their veins are grossly apparent, blueish black against their white skin, and their hair is usually pulled back tight, stretching their faces taunt as a result. They wear nothing above the waist, save for an overabundance of tattoos, piercings, silver and fiber chains, straps for weapons slung across their backs, and waterproof bandoliers packing ammo for similarly waterproof automatic guns of all shapes and sizes. 

The figure that swam towards me was a tall and thin. Her body tapered into a sleek black tail that was too dark to be anything but a cutting shadow through the water. She had a wild shock of white hair. Her face was taunt and waxy, and she had a thin pink scar over her right cheekbone. She was slung up with double bandoliers, and a band around the small of her waist that held her gun at a diagonal to her torso. As she moved, she held tight to the barrel of it, near her shoulder. 

She uncliped the gun, cocking it over one shoulder, in a practiced motion that meant nothing to me, as I was already unable to move. 

Mermaids. 

That was my first thought. 

I thought of hiding in a blanket fort with a young Caroline-- back when we’d got along like partners in crime-- and a baby Eli who kept wiggling around and had to be held upright, watching The Little Mermaid on a tiny tablet screen. Our mother was probably working late at the ER, and since this memory seemed to be after Eli was born, our father was most likely drinking somewhere in the ground floor of the house. 

I could feel Caroline’s bony shoulder as she was lying across my leg, I could hear Eli’s baby noises, the kind he used to make before he said his first word, “Ham”. I could picture the little redheaded Ariel swimming around on screen, waist as tiny as anything, makeup perfect underwater. I could remember the lyrics, the “flippin’ your fins you don’t get too far”s and the “I wanna be where the people are”s. 

The white haired soldier snapped off the safety. 

“I don’t know wha-- who you are, but I’m not causing any trouble here, I promise”, I assured, voice dry. I needed water, soon, and not the salty kind. 

“Oh, I know, but see, we’d like to cause a little trouble,” the white haired soldier laughed, a laugh far too high for her voice. “Torvori!” a deep voice from behind her snapped, “quod loqui linguis nolite sumus!” 

I’d elected to take Latin in middle school. We had to choose a language for the seventh and eighth grade. All my friends had taken either french or spanish. Something useful. A few students had elected to take German, or even Mandrin to be different, and had learned a small amount of vocabulary, and not much grammar. 

But me? Oh no, I’d had to take Latin, because the fourteen year old guy my pathetic thirteen year old ass had been crushing on for some reason wanted some dead language knowledge. I’d eventually had to take French in highschool so I could pass a proficiency test in a second language, to impress universities, because it is near impossible to be fluent in Latin. 

But I could recognize it when it was spoken. 

And I could understand the words “speak” and “language” and I could pick up on the fairly negative tone. We don’t speak that language. 

The man who swam forwards, putting a hand to push down her gun, seemed to be chastising her for speaking English. 

“Furorem,” she responded, addressing him by what seemed like a name and not a title, “Ego illum occidere?”

“Occidere.” That meant “kill”. That wasn’t good. 

The man moved forwards, forcing the muzzle of her gun all the way down and out of my face. He was also tall, but angular in a way she was not. His nose was broken, not in the roguish way, but in the crushed wide way that shrank his eyes into the small beady eyes of a shark. He had a crew cut, a flat face, and lightless eyes. He too was strapped up with weapons, but he had straps of faded leather, and not synthetic rope. 

“Nihil,” he replied.

“No” or “Nothing”. It seemed to be a command, and Tovori deflated, turning around and swimming off towards the other five figures. 

“You remind me of somebody,” Furorem said in accented but perfect english. I tried to place the accent of his voice, but couldn’t. “Are you going to kill me?” I asked in return. 

“No, no, no, not yet, not now,” he replied easily, “you’re one of the last of the oh so fragile humans, you are so very valuable, little terra. Come now, I never leave things of value behind whilst on the Hunt. Torvori! Quod porto!”

No sooner had he called the command out did Torvori shoot forwards, grabbing my wrists and hauling me through the water at the speed of a motorboat. Around us the other six, including Furorem, shot off at equal speed, moving in a small pack, barely above the water level. Underneath us, the shadows followed.

I rearranged my body so my face was above water and I could breath, and took a gasping breath, unable to move, hauled off with the Hunt.


	3. To Introduce Our Monsters

[Recording: voice of Darcy Adara]

There was a thump from the gym. Don’t worry I’m not about to get all poetic on you. I’ll tell you simply: something big and scary and very much alive fell down from the roof and onto the glossy wood flooring of our school gymnasium.

It was one of those moments with a clear divide between those who ran for the gym and those that ran away from it. Disney ran away, obviously. Crashtest, Jordan and Alberto ran with me towards it and-- after rushing to place a still very drunk Rose onto her sleeping mat, Daisy took a deep meaningful breath and followed us.

The five of us sprinted from the Library through the main hall and to the gym, the squeaks our sneakered footsteps echoing crisply.

The athletic tape was holding the water.

That made no sense.

We went immediately to the window. Destroyingly, glass shatteringly, and with the speed of instant death to any person who might have been under the torrent of the water, the gym had filled itself with water. It was now a black abyss of the deep sea.  
But the doors had held.

It seemed near pitch black in the gym, as we peaked cautiously through the window. All the light fixtures had been submerged and blown out by the pressure. It took two minutes of patient and impatient waiting for…. it to show.

It swam lazily by our tiny window, just like we were in some kind of freak show aquarium. How can I describe it?

It was a crustacean, like a crab, maybe more like a bug. With more than one set of beady, twitchy eyes. It’s jaw was open as if broken that way, revealing three rows of uneven teeth, many of them broken or mangled. The shell around its face was broken in several places, like it had been trying to eat through something solid. Something solid like an apocalypse proof school. Its body was an ancient dinosaur version of a horseshoe crab but enormous. Larger than a horse, larger than an elephant. I thought then and clearly this has all been some weird elaborate nightmare. I am going to wake up.

Unfortunately, I haven’t woken up yet.

Again, no spoilers, no sneak peeks, I’ll tell it like it happened. Even though it doesn’t make sense how it happened. Daisy screamed and stumbled away from the window and I shoved myself away from the glass, back a foot. As I did, Alberto folded to the ground beside me, closing his eyes, and a voice from behind us said, “don’t touch that door.”  
And because I’m, well, me, I slammed one hand palm up against the door as fast as I could before whirling around completely.

Jaoel, Kalaziel Jaoel, son of Rogziel. That was his name. His name isn’t a spoiler. He looked young, but also ageless. Robed in a weird sort of cloth and cotton jumpsuit, he looked eastern Europe, or maybe from the middle east, with shoulder length dark hair. He was a glowing, terrifying vision that made no sense without our current circumstances, and emminated intensity.

“And who the hell are you?” I managed before anybody else. I kept one hand at the door behind me and gave the guy who suddenly materialized in our submarine school a look that could kill.

And then Crashtest Lee dropped to his knees and started praying under his breath. At this point I suppose I was thinking, sure, this guy’s creepy but…. there’s a crab elephant in the gym I don’t think he beats that. Mystery guy opened his mouth again. “Don’t touch the door. Don’t touch the tape.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command. “How about no, and you tell me how the hell you got in here,” I countered.

He disappeared. No logic needed right? Not in the “poof” Disneyland style magic way, but in the creepy figure down a dimly lit, water dripping, high school hallway, horror movie way. Without getting too poetic: kind of like the killer does before he materializes right behind you with a bloody knife. Crashtest was curled in on himself on the tile floor, muttering vaguely about his Lord and Savior, at muttering which quickly devolved into religious promises in both english and korean. I nudged him out of the way with the toe of my Converse and kneeled in front of the door.

The water wasn’t coming out of the keyhole.

I gently pulled down the piece of tape and nobody tried to stop me. Daisy was crying a bit I think. And I still wasn’t surprised. Scared? Yes. Confused? Hella. Surprised? Somehow.... Not? The water was being held in the gym by something else. Like cling wrap or a force field. Did I touch it? Of course I touched it. Did mystical lights flash? Was I thrown across the room? No and no. But it was unbelievably cold. Like deep abyss of the ocean cold. And it totally let my tentative finger poke in. Like the world was sideways and I was sticking a finger down into water being held in place by gravity. I put all the tape back. There was no point doing anything else to the door. More gym equipment wouldn’t hold the crabephant.

And that’s what we called it. Because it sounded dumb, and dumb was better than gut-wrenchingly terrifying and death-y like it was.

I had a grand master plan now and that was: find mystery guy.

[I need a break.

We can give it a rest until tomorrow Darcy.

No, I want to get this over with…. Hey, thanks for making me tell the story before…. You know…. I want to be remembered as who I am, not as what they see me as. If I’m going to end up a martyr I might as well…. Have my say in how exactly I’m remembered? Does that make sense?

Yeah, I know. Yeah, that makes sense.

…. Okay, I’m fine, let’s go.]

My brilliant plan was to wander around the creepy submarine school to look for mystery guy. Jaoel. I know, super well-developed plan. As I wandered the halls I could feel his eyes on my back, and every time I turned the corner he was a fleeting presence behind me. But he wouldn’t come out, even as I shouted my way through the school, taunts echoing down the empty halls. Bouncing off lockers and posters for a dance that would never happen.

“Hey mystery disappearing guy! Yeah, I’m talking to you, you tall-ass magical coward! Come on, come out and talk to me! Chicken! Just dissapear when people don’t do what you tell them to, eh? Come on, scaredy cat! What’s in the gym, hun? Is it your pet? You own that horrible thing, mystery guy? Aw sissy, c’mon, I’ll go easy on you if you come out now! Invisible pushover! Wuss! Mama’s Boy!”

As my insults became steadily worse, and I realized he wasn’t going to come out, but rather follow me creepily around whilst possibly invisible, I switched gears. Yes, the guy had clearly either been hiding out this whole time in some empty classroom with no food and no water OR had mysteriously appeared in from the ocean. So clearly he could avoid me all night.

Eventually I gave in and headed back to the library, passing through the kitchen, which had seemed so scary the day before. I rattled around some drawers before stuffing my hoodie pocket with cracker packets and booked it for the library. When I closed the library doors behind me, I sighed shakily in relief, as the whole thing had been very horror-movie-esqe. Nothing bad ever happened in the main rooms of the building in a horror movie. It was always the hallway, or the kitchen, or the bathroom.

Warning the next part of this story contains serious jump-scares and complete BS. It’s rated “W”, for: What The Hell, Jaoel. (....But aren’t they all.)

He was in the library. Jaeol was in the library, Everyone was asleep, and I mean everybody. Even Crashtest, who didn’t sleep like a normal human before the Apocalypse. Jaoel was at the far end of the room standing over their sleeping forms. The minute I walked in the door I…. Well, the only way I can describe it is: I got very sleepy. When I looked away from the kids and at Jaoel’s turned back, I was fine. Alert, awake, angry. But if I let him rest in the peripheral of my vision as I checked the others to make sure they were alright, I felt this deep sleep settle over me like a blanket of fog. The smell of lavender hung thickly in the air.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, and tried to focus. I looked at Disney’s sleeping form and tried to figure out what was off about it. He was too deep asleep. He hadn’t slept that deep since we were kids.

My eyes grew heavier as I tried to focus on him, everything feeling like it was shutting down without my permission. I stumbled into a bookshelf and Jaoel turned.

Jaoel. I knew his name not like I was remembering it from some strange memory I’d been carrying, but like names were something I could always hear just by looking at a person. Like names were just a normal part of first perceptions. I could judge him by his looks, by the way he walked, talked, and by his name.

He took a step towards me and suddenly the room was crystal clear again, the lavender gone. I realized he had been leaning over Daisy and a creepy, possessive might be a vampire from a low budget chick flick sort of way. I gave him the benefit of the doubt for a second, reasoning that maybe it was just the lighting.

“You will go to sleep now,” he said, with a dark inflection. Nope, it wasn’t just the lighting. The guy had a distinctly Edward Cullen, paranormal-romance, bs voice too. “No thanks,” I responded, with absolutely no infliction, “but you could tell me who the hell you are”. I didn’t feel the least bit surprised when he launched himself near horizontally across the room at me, faster than a human could possibly move, just vaguely upset. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to crawl into my bed at home.

It was survival thoughts when he pushed me up against a bookshelf and said aggressively, “you are going to forget this exchange, and me. You aren’t going to open the Gym,” then, “what’s your name?”

“Darcy,” I answered, voice full of a very human fear. “Darcy,” he responded, “I’m sorry”. He disappeared, but he sounded like he meant it.

I didn’t forget. Spoiler alert: I’m extra special. In the “Last Hope of Humanity”, “Chosen One” kind of way. Just like everybody secretly dreams about. Unfortunately, however, in my experience, the title of “chosen one” is usually a ploy by the bad guys, so they can convince you to follow some “thousand year old prophecy” they hand wrote while you weren’t looking, and play the future out how they’ve envisioned it. Real heroes have to take into account any prophecies that seem legitimately unforged as well as what their own moral compass is telling them.

I didn’t forget what had happened in the library, and that’s the important part of the strange exchange, future Generations, I was supposed to forget. They can change what you remember, what you think, what you feel. They cannot be trusted, because of what they can do. You might see them as beautiful, but they’re not the good guys.That being said…. they’re not all the bad guys either.

I ran over to Daisy, assessing her for damage, realizing I knew what was going on. I knew he wasn’t just threatening me, I knew I was supposed to forget, but I hadn’t. Daisy woke up like any normal person being shook awake and yelled at me. I asked her if she was okay and she shouted back: “yes! Why wouldn’t I be?”

And then everyone else was awake.

“Nevermind,” I mumbled in confusion, “go back to sleep, everybody”. I was expecting at least a little protest-- or in Crashtest’s case quite a lot of protest-- but everybody turned from me, and went back to sleep. Like zombies. I frowned, because it was more than a little paranormal, and then I smelled the lavender. And I was asleep too.

Dreaming about Jaoel is what made me wake up. Like looking at him while I’d been awake had cleared the lavender. It’s hard to explain, but it was like the dream was a condensed shot of seeing him. The dream-- and I never dream-- was like a memory. Not my own memory, but somebody else’s. I was remembering something I’d never seen, and seeing Jaoel in real life felt like an echo of that stolen memory. Like that memory was trying to press at the backs of my eyelids, the surface of my consciousness. Asleep I got the whole picture-- the whole memory-- in technicolor.

In the dream he was the same as in waking, but with fiery, hellish wings rising from his shoulder blades. In the dream he was saluting somebody I couldn’t see, somebody right where I was, but a foot and a half taller than me. In the dream Jaeol looked terrified.

I woke up instantly aware of his presence above me, where I’d fallen onto the mat beside Daisy. Fallen after inhaling the lavender…. Only…. I’ve been carefully rearranged so I was lying on my back, hair out of my face.

It was, sure, because of my element of surprise that I was able to sit up, grab his shoulders, and body check him into the linoleum floor as hard as I could. “Still watching people sleep? Get a new mainstream paranormal-romance hobby,” I hissed.

“Caelum! What in the name of--”

I cut him off, using classic human action movie hero tactics like an arm across his throat, and said; “good question. Start talking”. He calmly responded, “look, Darcy--”

Irrelevant side-note; not poetic in the least: he said my name and it was like I had remembered thought or remembered his name. Like he could see into my soul-- see what kind of person I was with it on the tip of his tongue.

But he wasn’t finished talking. “I’m really very sorry, I am. But you’re going to forget this, and then forget me.”

I paused for a moment for dramatic effect (purely for a logical reason, I needed to get as much out of my element of surprise as I could….) and then said, “how about no, and you tell me who you are?” Hoping that, if the pure aggression in my voice was enough to scare football jocks back before, it was enough to at least be a little scary for whatever demon/angel thing this was. The new logic of After, after all, is strange. Disney’s still hanging on to that old logic. But for me this new logic was vital, as it allowed me to then decisively and clearly elbow Jaoel in the face.

He was a man-- or thing-- of military training and he responded by throwing me across the room into a bookshelf. Good news, I’m not dead. And nobody woke up despite the crash, thanks to his lavender voodoo. Surprisingly unhurt, I peeled myself off the floor, and launched myself back onto my feet. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Hurt. You.” he grit out, still in his mind control-y voice.

“That’s weird, I can’t say the same,” I responded, trying not to wince as I brushed off my shoulder. Wincing would ruin the whole badass aesthetic. He stayed true to his word and let me punch him first. A solid punch. A “he really wasn’t expecting that” punch. But despite the fact that I attacked well, he was a muscly guy, full grown, with 100 pounds on me, and with some supernatural strength…. even without the supposed mind control he had a slight advantage. I’d hit him with a classic human “high school hallway fight” right hook, and he responded with some karate kid, Jiu-Jitsu bs somehow knocking me flat on my back. Pretty inconsiderate.

“Stay down,” he growled, and I half expected him to follow it up with some aggressive ancient dialect specific to ninja gods. I wanted to respond with a slick, action heroine: “you’re going to let me go, and do you know why? Because you need to know why I can resist your mind-tricks.” Possibly delivered with a carefree, off-kilter smirk. But instead all I could puff out was a: “....can’t…. mind-tricks…. me….” Which thankfully sufficed enough, and distracted him long enough for me to regain my breath, and launch into a slightly awkwarder, slightly abridged version of that line, adding a smirk that was more of a grimace.

He let me up. “I apologize, Miss Adara,” he said, taking a step back, “this is not how I wished to first present myself to you. How do you say…. Not the foot I wished to start on.”

“Get a handle on your young-adult-love-interest at Barnes and Nobles tendencies and fetch that rope,” I responded, pointing at a box beside the sleeping twins.

“You misunderstand me,” he countered, “I am here to observe, to oversee. I am in no way an antagonist to your goals, however I am also under strict orders to disobey your commands. Do you understand?”

“But you can’t hurt me?” Darcy asked, “you’re under commands not to.”  
“Technically, as of now, yes. Unless there is undoubtable need, or an undeniable circumstance in which I must act out of self-defence for my physical safety and/or the knowledge that comprises my mental and metaphysical self,” he said carefully. “Well then take a swing at me,” I egged, throwing myself back into a fighting position, “you could do this all day, I presume, but I can’t. Enough hits and I’ll go down.”

“Your logic makes absolutely no sense,” he marveled.

“I’ll make you a deal, you answer all our questions, and I’ll answer all of yours,” I said, extending a hand. “I’ll answer as I can, and you answer as you can?” he amended, as a question. I nodded, and we shook hands. His skin was hot to the touch, as though he was running a fever.

He walked over and picked up the rope in silence, and for a moment I waited for him to either say something profound, or change his mind turn around and kill me where I stood-- still somewhat out of breath. But he just approached me slowly with the rope, looked at me odd for a moment, and then asked: “and Darcy…. what is a…. Barnes’ and Nobels’?”

“Tie yourself up in that chair,” was how I responded, “tight.”

The man could teleport, but the fake tie up was more for the reassurance of the others than anything else. He tied himself to the chair, and then turned to me for my review, watching my face. I tugged on the ropes, tightening them for no reason other than to be an ass. He’d flung me across the room. It seemed hardly unfair for me to give him a solid rug burn around the wrists.

I looked him in the eyes, unwavering, though I held a very flimsy bargaining piece. Yeah, he wanted to know how I worked, but the man looked as though he could just as soon dissect me as observe me more.

The humans in the room slowly woke up, stumbling to their feet like they were hungover. Except instead of shielding their eyes from the lights, they shielded their eyes from him. They looked at him, then at me, then at him again, confused and bewildered.

I looked down at him-- he didn’t seem afraid to be in his current position, only perhaps…. Slightly awkward to be facing such scrutiny? He looked up at me, and then back to the other kids, and then back at me, an eyebrow raised.

“This is Jaoel,” I introduced, “he’s going to answer all our questions about what the hell is going on.”

Alberto, Acacia and Crashtest all fell to their knees, Alberto muttering something in spanish. Disney and Jordan stood dumbstruck. “What?!” I shouted, going up to Disney and shaking his arm.

“His-- His wings,” Disney breathed. I whirled around.

And Jaoel had huge, floor brushing, live-fire wings. Like eagle’s wings, white and biblical, a strong and powerful looking extension of his own body, but on fire, red hot flames adorning his back like the center of a forest blaze. Just like my dream, only here, in the suddenly small space between the library shelves, he lit up the room.

“What the fuck?” Okay. There had been better, more original lines for budding heroines, but I get points for realism.

We huddled away from him on the opposite side of the library, out of earshot…. Well, out of earshot for a human.

Hushed whispers turned into an engulfing panicked wave of noise, and as the angry religious debate turning into mild shoving and cursing, I watched Jaoel watch me from across the room.

Angel. I wanted to call him an angel. But I wasn’t religious, and the word felt thick, and wrong on my tongue. Like a joke, on an insult. I knew his name, and it fit now even more correctly with him.

“Jaoel,” I whispered, and that felt right, like the name of something beautiful and unimaginably powerful, but self-contained. His eyes shone, evidently hearing my whisper, and stared at me with a beating intensity. A look that was any less would’ve felt out of place.

“HEY!!” Daisy scooped Acacia up into her arms. “SHUT UP!!” she yelled, and the room fell silent.

Daisy turned to me, and soon every face in the room followed her lead.

“Okay,” I agreed aloud, “does anybody have a recording app on their phone? Mine’s dead.” Not to mention my phone was a slide-out-keyboard dealio back in the good old days, back when forgetting to charge your phone with it’s dinky battery to 100% overnight wasn’t something something you’d live to regret in the After of the apocalypse.  
There was shuffling, and Jordan came forwards and placed a shiny rose-gold iPhone into my upturned palm. He looked at me slowly. “This is Macey’s. It.… It was in my pocket when…. Y’know. She didn’t take it with her to her car. It has sixty-two percent left.”  
I took it from him and smiled an apologetic but thankful smile, clicking it on and flipping to the voice-recording app.

“Okay,” I repeated, mostly to myself this time, “if anyone has questions for the prisoner, I’m going to record a short interrogation session.” Jaoel looked at me slowly, unconcerned but again hiding his discomfort at the attention unsuccessfully.

I regarded him cooly back. Prisoner. There. That fit. It made him less of…. Whatever it was he was, and more understandable. More controlled.

Even if it was technically a lie.

“Okay,” I said, turning to him, and turning on the recorder, “why don’t you begin by telling us what happened to the world.”


	4. Caroline

[a journaled account of proceedings written by Hanna Anderson]

It was impossible to gauge how far we traveled, as the Hunt skimmed the waves faster than possible. The line between the sea and the sky offered no landmarks. It wasn’t long enough for me to tire of holding my face above the water; I was panicked, and the adrenaline circulating my limbs created a safety net of strength.

But eventually something about the water covering and recovering my face seemed to short circuit my mind, as I stopped breathing as deeply out of survival instinct. I blacked out somewhere between the spot they’d picked me up and what I would later call The Buoy.

**

When I awoke, I was circled by faces. At first I assumed them to be Custodi; their hair was ratted and pressed down with dried seawater, and their eyes had the hollowed out dark circles.

But their skin was too dark, and their eyes too light, with small pupils and very human irises. They squinted down at me in the fading pink light of a sunset over the pacific ocean as I sat up.

I needed water soon. I needed food. I processed for a moment in distinct detachment, thinking only of the necessities for survival. 

“That’s my sister.”

That was Caroline’s voice.

“Please, that’s my sister, I just want to see her.”

As I turned, my head spun, combining everything into the blue swirl of sky and sea for a moment. The pink of the sunset blinked through, and then the pale yellow, and then my eyes focused on the odd layout in front of me.

I was on a raft of sorts, its metal and silicone construction both simple and sturdy in nature. With me were about six other people, all of them scared, tired and human. Across nearly twenty feet of water was another raft, and another, and another, so the four of them formed a small floating square of refugees.

What should’ve been refugees.

What must’ve been refugees.

What else could we be, all huddled on these glorified buoys that floated alone in such a careful organization on the infinite sea.

From the raft directly in front of me came Caroline’s voice again.

This she was spitting insults, blessedly very specific, english, twenty-first century insults that the guard grappling with her couldn’t understand. Because yes, there were guards, at least one to every human, young Custodi with a intense presence that indicated they were working hard to channel strong emotion into strong and quiet intimidation.

This wasn’t a refugee camp, this was a makeshift prison.

“Sede,” the guard holding her back from the water repeated, “tace.” These guys didn’t seem to know as much english, but in context, the repeated message of “Sede. Tace.” seemed to mean “Sit Down. Shut Up.”

Caroline scratched hard down the arm holding her, and the guard hissed audibly, even from twenty feet away. Blood tricked into the water, and he unclasped the gun at his hip in a quick motion.

“Verto,” called a voice from behind me, shaky, and in a thick, accented version of the Latin word for “swap”. I turned to see an older woman stand unsteadily on the the same rocking float as me.

“Verto,” Caroline replied in relief, beginning to stand to match her.

“Mane hic. Non tamen complevit,” the guard hissed, stopping her with his arm and yanking her down by the fabric of her shirt. Her footing slipped on the wet plastic of the raft’s edge, and she slid into the water next to him, hitting her elbow and head on the raft as she went.

I leaped into the water in a clumsy dive but as my hands slipped into the ocean, a strong, scaly tail hit my mid-section and threw me back onto the raft. I tumbled once, and was stopped by the other people aboard.

The Custodi who’d thrown me was small, with a shock of white hair cut close to their head by what looked like safety scissors. They headed for Caroline and the guard, and I groggily struggled to right myself and get back to the raft’s edge.

“Praecepta sint praecepta,” the smaller custodi said firmly, pulling to the guard away from Caroline. The woman on my raft jumped into the water and swam towards Caroline’s raft as Caroline approached me. They switched, passing in the water as the quiet human audience watched.

I pulled Caroline onto the raft and then into my arms and for once she didn’t protest. After a breath I began to move forwards again. Sensing my intent she pushed me firmly back into our raft mates, who held me down.

“Stop it,” she hissed, “he helped you by keeping you out of the water. Once you go in, you can’t get back out, unless somebody else is switching places with you.”

I blinked at her. Her hair was a mess, it had solidified into a scraggly tail where her ponytail had once been. Her eyes were rimmed in purple from dehydration, and red from the salt water. Her lips were cracked, and her entire face was red from the sun.

“You took Latin, right?” I nodded dumbly at my little sister. “Shut up and listen to what they’re saying.”

“Hoc venari. Et regiis invalidum,” Caroline’s guard hissed. They’d moved to the center of the space in between the rafts and were now much easier to hear.

“Um…. He’s saying--” I whispered to Caroline. “Who’s saying?” she whispered back. Our raft mates had leaned in to listen. “Big muscles, no hair,” I whispered back, “the one you scratched.”

“They call him Chao,” Caroline whispered, staring at him.

“He’s calling the other guy a weakling…. A royal weakling? A royal-loving weakling? He’s repeating now that This Is The Hunt.”

“Fratrem meum sic exarsisti post hunt,” the smaller one replied. His tone was even and pleasant enough, but his manner was cold.

“That’s Mellite,” Caroline whispered, pointing subtly. “He’s addressing Chao as his brother. He’s saying something about “their hunts”, maybe “my hunt is your hunt?” …. Wait no, he said something about pursuing the hunt.”

“Hoc venari,” Chao repeated dangerously, “si non praecepta.”

“Um….” I thought for a moment about the Latin room at my middle school, with it’s view of the courtyard and little whiteboards and colorful conjugation chart posters, “this is the hunt, we have no rules.”

“No. habemus ordines,” Mellite replied. “No, we have orders,” I translated quietly.

“Quid pronuntiasti, iube nos manere hic, qui cum spectant illa mortem, sive in manibus nostris, seu fatum est,” Chao replied, now taking up space as he began to circle Mellite, his tail sliding around and around the smaller guard in the dark water.

“Is that your will,” I tried, struggling to keep up, “to stay with his man, nope, scratch that, to stay with the men…. Oh, men like mankind. Who are but trees, nope, who are but the earth. Who will either faithfully die or become hands.”

I waited patiently for the next line, and only after a moment realized what I’d just told Cari and the others. “That can’t be right,” Caroline said for me. “That’s what he said,” I defended at a whisper, “‘be hands’ or…. ‘Have hands’ or…. ‘by hands’ or….” I paused, stomach sinking, “oh shit. The men who will die either by fate, or by our hand. Nevermind.” 

“Quid boni faciam ut venari,” Mellite replied in turn, circling the opposite way to catch Chao’s eyes. “Your 'Mellite' is in trouble,” I whispered to Cari, “he’s saying that he’s only doing ‘what is best for the Hunt’.”

“Vos post ordines abscondam,” Chao said, and now he seemed more than leering, he seemed angry. “You hide behind your orders,” I repeated. When Mellite failed to respond past scowling slightly and looking down at his hands, Chao struck out. He had a gun, and several more decorations wrapped around his waist, but he chose to hit Mellite with an open palm.

“Fortasse non debere projice te in terras, Mellite,” Chao whispered, loud enough for both the prisoners and guards to here, “et vide quid velis esse--” The rest was lost to the wind.  
“He’s threatening to throw Mellite onto land, to see how he fares there,” I translated, “or, maybe he’s saying Mellite belongs on land? I don’t know, it sounds threatening….” To my surprise Caroline gripped my arm tightly, staring worriedly at the smallest guard as he tread water in slow circular motions with his tail. Chao had left him to speak with other guards, who were snickering from the far raft, but Mellite hadn’t moved from his spot in the center.

Caroline didn’t defend herself, or him, but stared at me imploringly. “We need to help him.”

“We need to help him?” I asked, meeting her eyes, “I’m sorry, have you seen our current predicament? I don’t care how--” She hit my arm, harder than necessary, “no, idiot. I mean if we help him, he might help us. Escape.”

I looked at Caroline again, seeing a new side of her. I hugged her head and shoulders into my middle, smiling into her hair, “that’s my sister.”

**

“Hanna,” Caroline said urgently, “I know where Chao is from. Oh my god. And Furorem. I read it such a long time ago--”

“What are you talking about?” I replied, cutting her off with a huff.

“Do you remember the Wake books?” she asked. She’s gone crazy, I thought with a disheartened sigh, this is the one of the first indicators of a dehydrated downward spiral.

“Yes,” I said carefully, “that e-published series that was bookmarked on the desktop computer for, like, five years, even though you’d already read it twice. It had a stupid picture of angel wings on the homepage.”

“How did I not realize--” she demanded of me, to which I made a placating gesture.

“May the 20th of 2021, that’s when the world ends in Wake.”

“Look, Cari, I think you’re remembering differently, because of everything that’s happened. People do that, in times of stress, blur memories together to try and make sense of them. Mix things together. Our world ended on May the 20th of 2021, the likelyhood of it ending that date in ANY series that was a dime a dozen young adult “modern fiction”--”

“It gained a cult following,” Caroline continued, once again set in the stubborn idea that she was right, and had the look about her that she would not change her mind for anything. Disturbingly, when she got that look, she usually was right, and was usually remembering some small detail none of the rest of my family could recall that changed the entire situation. “It started post-apocalyptic. It had angels and monsters and a prophecy about an epic battle for the throne of heaven…. and it was an unfinished work. It stopped being updated when I was like eight and you were like, twelve. But it wasn't until I was in middle school, that Wake became a part of my life--”

“I remember,” I replied.

“It was something I had in common with with other kids my age,” she continued, unprompted, “it was a conversation starter with new friends, it was a way to express myself, find my own writer’s voice on the internet.”

“I remember all the fanfic,” I said. It’d started as a joke, but it ended up serious, and proud. Damn I was always proud of her. Then I remembered something else. “It stopped, abruptly. Didn’t it?” I asked.

She nodded. “Nobody knew for sure what had happened to the author, “Sø”. Nobody had been sure of who they were to begin with, but the 40th chapter was never finished. It left off with the main character looking down the muzzle of a gun of all things.”

“May the 20th was celebrated on the internet with fanart and fanfic, every year,” Caroline continued, “as a joke. I forgot last year, and this year. How did I forget? It was the big one, the real ‘end of the world’. Sø set the story in the very near future, nobody knew why.”  
“That’s….”

“Crazy?” she finished for me. “Yeah,” I replied quietly, “but I mean, what isn’t crazy right now? It has to have something to do with all this.”

“What happened to the main character?”

Caroline’s jaw tightened. “She died.”

**

“Cari, I don’t think that’s a good idea, considering last time,” I tried again. “Last time you tried flirting with him, and made yourself look like an idiot,” she bit back, effectively shutting me down. “It always works in the movies….” I muttered, more to myself than here. Night had fallen, but our floating prison was far from quiet. People cried, people hummed to themselves, the guards on night shift laughed loudly over a bottle of alcohol and a story that had most likely been told a million times, endlessly bored with their assignment to our little hell. Two guards swam the perimeter aimlessly. One was an angry looking older woman with a silver streak that ran down her hair, skin and tail. It seemed as though she simply couldn’t sit still. In the moonlight her stripe looked less like a paint job on a fancy car and more like a scar of a long ago gash.

The other was Mellite.

As he approached, Caroline leaned forwards on her stomach, dragging her hand in the water lightly. This was dangerous. The laughing guards could easily notice, or silver scar, but the former seemed all too drunk, and the latter too far away to sense the ripples. Mellite notice.

“We’re looking for our brother,” Caroline admitted softly to him, making a hand gesture that was clearly beckoning. I don’t know who was more startled with her honesty, me, or the merman. “Don’t touch the water,” he snapped, and looked at the huddle of guards nervously. Caroline let her pinky finger swish circles in the water with a purposeful look in his direction.

It worked, he swam over immediately, and roughly placed her hand back next to both of mine on the raft. He seemed to be contemplating chastising her, or me. He seemed to be about to remind us not to draw attention to ourselves. But all he said was, “I can’t help you.”

“Come on,” Caroline pressed at a whispered, even as he turned to leave, “you mean to tell me you’ve never had a family member, or a friend, you had to find and help? We just want to know where the other human survivors are.”

He turned back and seemed to implore with me to control her. I shrugged. “Why do you think I’d tell you that?” he asked sharply of Caroline. Now he was making her angry. I put a preemptive hand on her shoulder to keep her in place as she ground out, “I don’t know, maybe to clean your conscious after killing so many people?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not responsible for the orders around here,” he replied, looking like he needed somebody to hold him back. And damn I couldn’t do both at the same time. “My conscious is clean,” he asserted.

“It’s not and you know it’s not,” Caroline pressed. “Lower your voice,” he replied, matching her furious whisper, “it’s not just you, if they catch me talking to humans-- in english-- they’ll--”

“I don’t give a damn!” Caroline exploded, “my little brother is six!”

“MY LITTLE SISTER WAS SIX TOO and that didn’t stop humans from picking her up in a fishing net!!” he turned and dove under the water, straight under our raft and out of  
view.

“Are you asking to be the next one I send down there,” Chao asked from over my shoulder. His eyes were trained on Caroline. “I- It was me shouting!” I interrupted, “I was just saying you have terrible service here and my feet are cold and wet and the food is awful, nay, non-existent, and I demand--”

 

He hit me with the back of his hand and I fell into Cari and the others, some of whom startled awake. “Keep your negative reviews to yourself, terra bitch,” he hissed, without much enthusiasm. Then he slunk away back to the huddle.

**

“Seato.”

Sunlight snuck viciously through my eyelashes as I blinked awake, focusing on the sky, the the curve of the ocean horizion, and finally Mellite’s face, inches from my own.

“Come again?” I asked, my mind reaching for latin slowly.

“Sea- To,” he repeated, “it’s a human word. English. I don’t know what it means.”

“Well me neither buddy,” I replied, trying to sit up and face away from the blinding light of the rising sun. He yanked me back down so hard my brain rattled around in the back of my skull. “The others will be awake soon,” he said, wincing in sympathy for my obvious whiplash, “they can’t see me talking to you.”

I coughed a couple times before I regained my voice, and managed a “fine” with less anger than I’d intended. “Wake your sister,” he instructed nodding at Cari, “Cay-oh-leen.”

“No,” I said, “I’m gonna let her sleep, but if you want to have a man to man with me, that’s fine.”

He glared. Then he grabbed past me for Caroline’s shoulder and shook her awake. She rose with a start, and I had to clasp a hand over her mouth. “What is it?” I demanded, turning back to Mellite.

“Seato. It’s where the rest of the human survivors are.”

Me and Caroline stared at him in shock for amazement, and I almost broke down into ugly happy tears. There were other people still alive. We weren’t the last. We weren’t alone.

“I don’t know where it is,” Mellite continued, speaking fast and quiet, “but Furorem does. He wants to find it and destroy it. For fun. I can’t get his master map off of him, nobody knows where he keeps it. But I do know that the place is supposedly south by southeast from here.”

I turned to Caroline, my brain finally waking up. “We should go. We have a direction, and the sun always sets in the West. We can sneak out tonight.”

“What about the other human prisoners here?” Caroline demanded, sitting up to fully look down upon me in disbelief, “are we just going to leave them here to slowly die?”

“Yes. Yes, we are. I’m going to save you, and then Eli.”

Caroline physically moved away from me. “You go and run then, good luck with that. I, on the other hand, have a conscious.” “Cari--” I tried. She cut me off. “No. Come on, Hanna. What if some kid here is somebody else’s little brother?”

I clenched my jaw, my lips pursing into a thin line. Mellite grabbed my wrist for my attention. “I have to go,” he said quickly, and dove underwater.

“Goodmorning,” came Furorem’s sing-song voice from the center of the camp, “look at all of you! Now that I’m here, what do you say we stop waiting around and have some fun?”


	5. To Introduce-- and Interrogate Our Help

Pink and glittery, the only thing Macey’s phone needed were some rhinestones, or a “my parents have a lot of money to spend on me” sign. It seemed like such a foreign object.  
**

[click.] 

[RECORDING]

Darcy: What is your name?  
Jaoel: Kalaziel Jaoel.   
Darcy: What happened to the earth, Kalaziel Jaoel?   
Jaoel: I’m truly very sorry, Darcy. But I can’t tell you.   
CrashTest Lee: Not even going to lie, and say you don’t know?  
Disney: Clearly you don’t know what Darcy’s capable of.   
Darcy: What happened to our earth? …. Mr. Jaoel?  
Jaoel: You don’t understand. I want to tell you. Don’t you see? I truly do. But I cannot. I am Bonded, as are my brothers, to Rogziel. By an oath of….You don’t have a word for it in English. In Latin it is “oath of vinculum”. Because of this I CAN’T tell you. I quite physically cannot. Please, ask me a different question.   
Disney: Bull.   
[there’s a cough, and then a sharp sound, like a slap, and a general intake of breath]  
Darcy: What do you think it would take to break that Bond, Mr. Jaoel?  
[Jaoel’s voice seems no different than before]  
Jaoel: You’d have to kill me. Believe me, I’ve tried. There’s nothing that breaks a Bond such as mine, barring death.  
[silence for a moment]  
Darcy: Well…. That would be rather.... counter-productive.   
Daisy: What’s the thing in the Gym?  
Jaoel: [breathes heavily] That I can tell you. That’s a ventus. They’re the steeds of the Hunt. They’re the domesticated cousins of the Asorbeats, the “Consumers”, that destroy any structures or waste that stands in the way of the Hunt.   
Darcy: What’s the Hunt?  
Jaoel: An extremist group, with beliefs centralized around the Change-- er, that is to say…. What have you been calling it? The Wave. Their beliefs are centralized around the Wave. They live to see what the divine forces have built be destroyed. They’re continuously linked to gang violence related crimes down there, but are never really seriously taken on by anyone. Unfortunately they serve a “purpose” so to speak, to the king, and are therefore left mostly alone to do as they will. With a blind eye turned to their destruction…. They’ve even been funded, on occasion, I regret to say, by the Custodus or Angelic councils.   
Daisy: Down there? In hell or in--  
Darcy: Angelic Council. Angel? Is that what you are?   
Jaoel: It’s all about loopholes with my Bond, Darcy. I need you to rephrase that. And Daisy, not hell, down there in the ocean. The trenches of the world.   
Jordan: The Hunt, are they…. Human, then?  
Jaoel: No. They are the Oceanum Exercitus. Erm…. Ocean army. We call them the “custodes” or “custodi”, it means “the watchers” or “guardians” in our colloquial Latin, but that’s just common slang. They call themselves different things. And you humans seem to call them…. “Syreni”? No…. “Sirens”? No. “Mermaids”. I presume it comes from the fact that maids are caretakers, but I really don’t know why that’s the term your lore has settled upon. The Custodi were placed in the sea to watch over you, the people of the earth. Very good loophole, Jordan.   
Jordan: How do you know our names?  
Jaoel: I’ve been assigned to watch you.   
Darcy: Why?  
Jaoel: I…. I cannot tell you. I’m sorry. But I can promise you that I personally mean you no harm.   
Darcy: Oh, yeah. I sooooo believe you…. Wait, if you don’t mean us harm, I presume somebody else does?  
Jaoel: Good job. Yes, yes they do-- [a cough, and then a rattling breath]  
Darcy: Who?  
Jaoel: [harsh coughing] I-- I can’t--  
Darcy: Fine. What exactly can you tell us?  
Jaoel: The Hunt….  
Darcy: Yes, keep telling me things about the scary mermaids, and pray they’re useful.   
Jaoel: Pray is an ironic choice of words.   
Darcy: But you can’t tell me why.   
Jaoel: No. But I can tell you: the Custodi, they serve their masters.   
Darcy: Who are their masters?   
Jaoel: I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that--  
Darcy: Are their masters the angels?   
Jaoel: I can’t tell you that, but I can say- completely unrelated- that you are a very bright and insightful young woman, Darcy.   
Darcy: So they serve angels.   
Jaoel: Ask me more questions about the Custodi, Darcy.   
Darcy: How long have they been around?  
Jaoel: That is a good question. Since before humans.   
Darcy: Like, since the dinosaurs?   
Jaoel: No, since many-- Since-- Ack-- A-- [loud coughing, as though the angel had suddenly fallen very ill. There’s a pause, and then, as if the angel was trying to get a word out while being strangled, or while in a bone-crushing vise-like grip) E-- e-- e-- I’m sorry. I can’t.   
[the sound of a frustrated stomp]  
Darcy: Disney! Sit down.   
Jaoel: I’m sorry, I really am. I want to help you, I do.   
Darcy: Why? Is it your job to help us? Who sent you? Why are you cooperating with me, is it because you’re under orders?  
Jaoel: I’m being cooperative under my own free will, Darcy. The orders I serve under, Rogziel’s orders, would have me do something very different.   
Daisy: ….Is Rogziel the one who wants to hurt us?  
Jaoel: You’re very smart, too. 

[CLICK]

**

And that’s the end of the first recording. Though we left scared of the new threat this “Rogziel” presented, the others were in high spirits. Of course they were. Those idiots. They thought he was tied up safe and sound in and wasn’t about to break out and kill us all in our sleep. 

Granted, he had said he was helping us of his own free will, presumably under threat of punishment for doing so should this “Rogziel” find out. But he could be lying to gain our trust. He could be lying about any and all of it. 

Not the angel part though. Not the wings. They were real. 

**

Questions for the Angel:   
Is there an after After? Will the water go away?  
Who is Rogziel?  
Where did the Custodes come from?  
Is God real?  
Why is the world underwater?   
What’s the Change?  
Where is my mom?

**

Acacia’s childlike scrawl completed our small list of questions. When she’d finished writing, I kneeled beside her. 

“You have excellent handwriting,” I complemented softly. Alberto watched me wearily.   
“Thank you, Ms. Darcy,” Acacia responded quietly, “can you please make sure that Mr. Angel sees this?" 

“Of course,” I promised, and gave her what I hope was a reassuring, big-sisterly hug. She seemed confident in Jaoel’s abilities, but on-the-fence about mine. “If you write down your mommy’s name, that might help him.”

**

In all this time, the monster in the gym-- sorry, mermaidian steed-- hadn’t moved much. I couldn’t find much information on angels-- pretty limited resources-- but I did find out that Kalaziel meant “Healer”. “Jaoel” didn’t seem to exist in any lore. Rogziel meant “the Full Wrath of God”. At least “Healer” was promising. I was a little weary of the meaning of the name Jaoel. It could mean, oh, I don’t know: “destroyer of planets” or “eater of babies”. 

I’ve read my share of books out of the Young-Adult fiction section. I knew there had to be a “good” angel, and I was praying the one we had was it. Because the Good Angel was always there to woo the unlikely heroine, pull her into his supernatural war, and then save her.   
I supposed that he could save me, if it meant I got to take a nap. 

Once most of them had fallen asleep-- barring CrashTest, who seemed to have no interest in me or what I was up to anyways-- I snuck out of the Library to walk. He was there, at the end of the hall. 

Scared the daylights out of me, might I add, appearing out of nowhere in the dark. 

“Jaoel,” I breathed sharply. He was already looking at me. “Darcy,” he greeted. I supposed I needed to fit him in a box, in my mind. Call it stupid if you will, but I needed to control him, at least in my own brain. “Jaoel is so long and angel-y,” I mused, as we walked towards one another, “how about Jay?” 

He gave me a completely unreadable look, one I’d not yet seen. “Whatever you wish to call me is fine--” he responded. 

“So humans are like, done, right?” I asked, cutting him off, “I mean, I’m not an idiot. You’re an angel. The world is ending. God is done with us, right?” By now we were standing quite close, and I pushed past him to walk on. He followed, and we began down the dimly lit hallway. 

“Well I wouldn’t say God,” he responded. 

“So the rest of that is true?!” I demanded, whirling on him. “You’re very, very smart, Darcy,” he replied sadly. He looked pained for a moment, more pained than usual. “Look, I wanted to tell you that there’s a….”

Loophole, loophole, come on. We verbally danced around each other for a moment, searching for a way to the thing he wanted desperately to say. When he finally pushed ahead I regarded him cautiously, with crossed arms. 

“A disagreement in the….” he tried. 

“Custodes? The Hunt?” I asked. No response, but he shook his head. 

“Angels?” I tried. 

“You’re so perceptive,” he responded. 

“What do the angels have to disagree about?” I asked. He looked like he was trying to telepathically will me to figure it out on my own. “Is it about the Custodes--? No? Is it about us? The Wave?”

He nodded. 

“Do some angels not agree with the Wave?” He smiled at me, the first genuine smile I’d seen on him, and it was very, very human. 

“Ask me again why I’m helping you,” he all but begged, “because I--” He stopped talking, choking on nothing. 

“You don’t agree with the Wave,” I said slowly, “you want to save us as a screw you to the angels who did it.”

He smiled for a moment, but then shook his head, still wheezing. We’d stopped walking to allow him to catch his breath. “I want to help you, Darcy Adara. I want to save you. But this is to be a battle of morals. Of what’s right and what’s wrong. And right now you don’t seem to me entirely convinced that the human race is worth saving. So I need to know that you’re on board.”

This guy. Just wouldn’t go in his box. 

“You don’t know anything about me or my morals,” I hissed, suddenly needing to be in his personal space. 

“Why did you try and help the other kids, Darcy?” he countered, “why are you leading them? A power play? Am I talking to the new leader of the human race?”

“I-- HOW DARE YOU?! I SAVED THEM BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO!! I TOLD THE KIDS WHO LEFT TO GO TO HIGH GROUND BECAUSE I THOUGHT THAT WOULD SAVE THEM!! If this is to be a battle of morals, then I--!”

There was a crash, which shocked me away from him. The hand gripping his shirtfront loosened as we turned. I stepped back. He was giving me that unreadable look again.   
Without so much as a word to him, I turned and ran towards the shouting. 

It was Alberto, and Jordan, and Daisy. Acacia was crying, and Alberto was trying to calm her down. He was speaking rapid-fire spanish at me, and Acacia was sobbing paraphrase translations. 

When I looked behind me, from where I’d just ran, Jaoel was gone. 

“He wants to go outside, to go above water, and to find grown-ups!” Acacia cried, hanging off his arm. 

“No, absolutely not,” I said firmly. He was holding up some kind of metal box to me and shouting over her. 

“He wants to be an idiota, and get himself killed!” Acacia continued, hitting his arm. He yelled more about the box but I couldn’t understand and Daisy and Jordan were saying things like “we don’t know what the pressure is like out there” and “what about the things, the monsters? And the Hunt?!” and “we have no idea what it’s like! We have to think this through!” and Acacia was crying things at him in Spanish. 

Finally, Alberto said something in english. “The angels have come. I need to save Acacia. I need to find my Grandmother.”

“Then take me with you!” Acacia demanded. 

The rest of the group had arrived. 

“There’s nobody up there,” CrashTest hissed bitterly, “anybody who was told to go outside is dead.” He looked at me, and I swallowed, looking away. 

“Box,” Alberto said, holding it out to me. 

“He and I found it in the offices,” Jordan said, stepping forward to open it. It was about the size of a shoe box, metallic and decently heavy. Inside was what looked like oddly stylistic scuba diving equipment with no apparent oxygen tank, and a solid black and grey, old fashioned tape recorder. 

“Who--”

“Put it here?” Jordan finished for me, “no clue. It has an insignia, “Rochester”.”

My attention snapped back to Alberto and the second diving mask he was holding, identical to the one in the box. “Going up,” he stated, pointing at the roof, and the darkness beyond. 

“You think we’re meant to go up. That somebody’s waiting for us. Whoever left that box,” I responded. He nodded at me. “You can’t stop me,” he said simply. 

I took a deep breath. “No,” I admitted, “I can’t. But I could go with you.”

He shook his head. “If I die, you can’t die. You take care of Acacia.”

Acacia was crying now, sliding down his legs to hold his ankles. He sat down with her, and said something serious to her in spanish. Could I have let him have his moment with his sister? Yes. Did I? No. 

And thank god I didn’t. Thank god Disney took Spanish for 3 years and loves me enough to set morals aside and be snoopy. 

I turned to Disney, raising my eyebrows, and he responded with a nonplussed facial expression. Then he leaned down to me, and translated at a whisper, “‘Don’t tell them, Acacia.’”

No “I love you”s, or “I’m coming back for you”s. Just a decision to place a secret on Acacia’s small shoulders before he left. 

But maybe the “I love you”s went without saying. I thought about my dad, and whether he would’ve known that “i love you” was always implied between us. Even though I couldn’t say it to him before-- while he was working at the garage-- and I was at school--

I started crying, I think. I don’t really remember. I think Disney hugged me. 

“Can you….” I remembered to breath, “can you take a list of the names of our parents?”   
He nodded. 

Daisy carefully recorded them on looseleaf. She folded it. She tucked it in a ziplock plastic bag. And she handed it to Alberto to slip in his pocket. 

“Our mom’s name is Laura,” she said quietly, “she goes by Crystal.” Alberto nodded at her. Rose hugged her sister. 

“Godspeed, Alberto,” Crashtest said quietly, and I turned to him, read to slap him for a sarcastic God joke, but for once he seemed entirely serious and focused, “get us out of here, okay?” 

He knew how to manage a language barrier I realized. And suddenly I was crying for even Crashtest. Who had he lost?

I cried for everybody, but only for a moment, and only into the crook of Disney’s shoulder, and then I swallowed the tears somewhere deep into my stomach. “Godspeed,” I repeated.   
Alberto opened the inside door, and then closed it behind himself. He turned, mouthed “don’t tell them….” and then “I love you” in spanish to Acacia, and then turned to face the wall of black. He pulled the diving mask over his head. 

He opened the doors by prying on them until the automatic release kicked in. The ocean flooded in, taking his body like a puppet, and flinging him against the inside glass. The pressure. It was like a semi-truck slamming him into the doors until they began to crack.   
And then he managed to turn around. Once he’d found his breath, he pointed to the oxygen-tank-less mask, took a deep breath, gave a thumbs up to us, and then he was gone, kicking off the glass and up, out into the black.


	6. Jaoel

Daily Report. May 18th, 2021 by solar calendar,

The day has been long. I flew drills with my unit. The weather was good. However, as we flew a patrol of the sky border, I watched the oceans move tempestuously on earth, and I realized I cannot pretend to be able to live with what we are about to do. I don’t know how else to tell you, Rogziel. 

Jaoel

**

Daily Report. May 19th, 2021 by solar calendar,

The dread is coiled in my stomach is like a live thing, twisting at every mention of the light that is to be lost. Not as though a cloud passed over its sun-like brightness, but like the serpent of my dread come to swallow it whole and forever. Rogziel, I know you watch me, and you know I disagree with what is to happen. I also know that people who disagree with your will die swiftly, and in the nighttime, whether they voice their beliefs or try desperately to keep them hidden. And so I wish to tell you this…. Assign me as you would, father. Send me with my brothers to do your bidding, and I will not disobey you. Yes, I think humanity is worth keeping here, alive. I think we can learn from them. I think they deserve forgiveness for what they are about to do, what you know they’re about to do. They deserve another chance. I will tell you this in hopes that you consider it, but disobey you in thought only, never deed. If you wish to speak with me about why I hold to these ideas, I would be honored. I dare not allow you to think I would ever be disobediant to your will, as I value my life. 

Jaoel 

**

Daily Report. May 20th, 2021 by solar calendar, 

I wish to impress upon you now, Rogziel, not my opinion, but my fury. The way the Bond twists in my veins, it askews the words I write to you, it numbs them until they’re placid. But now the heat of anger has simmered some of that poison away. I can speak in full capacity of my sanity for today-- for the first time in months. I will fight for the people on earth, though I am forced to serve you-- yes serve, for the love I feel for you is false and cursed. Thought I WANT to serve and protect you with every cell of my Bonded being, I know today as I’ve always known that it is a lie. That you put that sick, twisted loyalty into me. So I defy you. You have damned my soul in your genocide. I used to believe in Eden. I used to want it for myself, for my siblings, for you. At any cost. But no longer. I stopped believing in the ideal of stumbling upon the perfection that was Eden in a race we created. Because we are not perfect. We are not great. We are not even good anymore. We are now something horribly evil. And that is no fault but ours. 

Jaoel 

**

Daily Report. May 21th, 2021 by solar calendar, 

The day passed in a blur for me. My unit flew drills in the morning. The weather was good, but the sky dark. We flew above the cloud line, leaving me to struggle to catch my own thoughts. I’ve felt thoroughly numb today, number than usual. It’s offset even my coordination. I don’t know why-- or, I can’t remember why, but if it’s you who’s put this fog into my blood father, then I’m sure you’ve done it for a good reason.

Jaoel

**

Daily Report. May 24th, 2021 by solar calendar, 

It took a lot of energy, dare I say too much energy, to fly myself back to the high school. My assignment. My mission. I am still so numb. I’d nearly forgotten the exact gloss of the linoleum floors, and the crunch of the panelled ceiling, it was hard to picture where I was going until I got there. Still, it’s my assignment, so I’ll try to do better. I’ve tried to dream this place every night, so I can come back faster the next day. The first thing I saw today was her. I’m so relieved she’s still alive, but I cannot say why. I hadn’t meant to keep a connection to her, just the building, but I suppose the line there must’ve blurred. I will try to do better. 

Jaoel


	7. .... And Back To Our Monsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting again-- the last chapter was v v short so I thought I'd do this one too <3

People were fighting. Humans. The rest of us watched on in horror, as an older man was struck in the head, and went underwater. “Reigning Champion!!” Furorem hollered in delight. Chao threw the young boy who’d struck the old man a cooked fish, wrapped in lettuce-y seaweed, and the boy devoured it hungrily. 

“Volunteers? Any volunteers?” Furorem called. The crowd of human prisoners shifted uneasily. They boy couldn’t be older than fifteen. “No volunteers?!” Furorem yelled in mock shock, “well then, I choose…. You!” Collectively, albeit blankly, the human prisoners turned to face a girl who was also around fifteen. “You look like you could use the food, how about it, dear?” 

“No,” she protested immediately, “please no.” Chao and another sneering guard grabbed her ankles and yanked her into the water. 

I turned away, and tried not to think about how painfully my stomach was churning. If I could get food for me-- not to mention Caroline, who was slowly becoming more sluggish.... The girl yelled in horror and pleaded with the guards, who only pushed her forwards with the tips of their guns. I glanced back, and the boy was shaking his head, starting to cry. The fish was gone, and the old man’s body had long disappeared into the depths. The dark shadows still churned underneath us, rising only in pursuit of a sinking body. 

I shook my head. No. I would never. 

“This is LUDUS LATRUNCULARIUS,” Caroline whispered to me with dawning realization, “a version of it anyways.” 

“Since when do you know Latin,” I asked. I was turned to fully face her, but her line of sight soared over my shoulder, to stay morbidly affixed to the struggle in the water. “It means chess, I think,” she replied, gaze unwavering, “it’s from Wake. The…. Angel’s play it. The First Branch of the Branded army.” 

“Caroline, you’re not making any sense,” I begged, trying to catch her eyes, “what does that mean?”

“The Branded? Oh, in the books they’re heaven’s army, they’re soldiers. Crusade men,” she replied, pushing me out of the way to watch.

“What did you just say?” a guard demanded from behind me, startling us both. 

“Nothing,” Caroline said quickly. The guard ran a lazy thumb over the club attached to his belt, while the girl in the water ring screamed and the people behind us trained their eyes on the ground. 

“Wanna try that again?” the guard sneered. This guard was horribly heartless looking, but nowhere near as bad as Chao, and Chao was nowhere near as bad a Furorem. 

“I said that I’m scared we’re stranded,” Caroline replied, sealing the deal of her blatant lie with a glare. The guard huffed, clearly wondering if it was his own attunement to the phrase Branded that had caused him to hear what he was afraid of hearing. And that was exactly what we’d needed to see. “Whatever,” he hissed, then cursed in Latin, and slinked back towards Chao.

“So they do exist,” Caroline whispered, “angels, I mean. Or at least…. This guy seems to think they do.” 

I nodded, sudden hope blooming in my chest. “And he looked terrified of them.”

**

“How can we get Chao to bring along all four rafts with him to Seato? Then we could make a run for it, all of us. A run to SeaTo, that is,” Caroline whispered. It was late at night. The night had gotten much quieter after a day of LUDUS LATRUNCULARIUS, and we’d moved closer and talked in lower tones to avoid attention. 

“These Branded, the guards seem terrified of them, if we get Chao to make orders based out of fear, rather than thirst for bloodshed….” I began.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, scare him into moving camp with all of us,” Caroline interrupted, “unfortunately, the Branded are also bloodthirsty assholes and even if we could figure out how to grab their attention, I don’t think we’d want to.”

I shook my head quickly. “No. You think I want to SUMMON the group that invented this horrific idea of what chess is?” I replied. Caroline began to mumble that Furorem’s version was different, and I shook her shoulder lightly to gain her refocused attention. “I’m not suggesting we go looking for more magical soldier units who may or may not want to kill us,” I clarified, “I’m only proposing we pretend the Branded are here. What do you remember about them? From Wake?” 

“You’re trusting Wake now? I thought you thought it was a sun-induced fever dream causing me to connect it and real life,” she accused. “It’s all we got,” I replied, “tell me everything you remember.”

She took a deep breath. “They’re all sons of the same angel, apparently. I don’t remember his name. There’s 365 of them, one for every day of the year. They can’t betray their orders, or their father, and he works for the king, who sends them out as an army unit when he needs to. They have no souls, no consciousnesses, they kill for the king of heaven without remorse. They’re called the Branded because they have the angelic royal sigil burned into their wings.”

I beckoned to Mellite who, instead of looking angry, looked exhausted, and only glanced around in cautionary fear a moment before determining the coast was clear, and swimming over to us in the dark night water. His body cut the black underneath like a knife, and, unfortunately, drew my attention to the shadows below. He’d tied his hair into a top knot that was drying tightly in its salt-water shape. 

Oddly, he looked more and more human the more exhausted he got, though his dark circles contrasted against his white eyelashes, and his veins still stood prominent through his skin like a corpse. 

“Yes?” He asked, directing it at Caroline. No “what do you want”, no “this is dangerous for me”.

“What do you know about the Branded?” Caroline asked, pushing in front of me to do so. As Mellite stiffened and demanded, “where did you hear that word?” I realized she wasn’t stealing my thunder, she was jumping into the line of fire for me. 

Caroline shrugged. “Tell me what you know first.”

“I’ve never seen one. They’re the sort of monsters that are well known but never spoken of,” he said quietly, “they keep the Hunt in check most of the time-- if you’ve ever wondered why you’ve never seen a Custodi on the news or washed up on a beach before now, you can thank them. This meddling, of course, infuriates Furorem and the others to no end, but I’m well glad for it. I do not, however, agree with their immorale approach to policing. They regard terra people-- you-- as specks of dust, and me and my people as crimes waiting to happen. They believe we’re guilty until proven innocent; they smite first and ask questions later. No matter the odd image humans have adopted of them, or the facade they put on, they’re vicious monsters, who’d sooner kill a man in their path than walk around him.”

Perfect, I thought, if we can freak this boy out maybe he’ll freak the other guards out, and then it will have come from within. That would protect the lie. 

“Is Furorem scared of them as well?” Caroline asked. I looked to her questioningly. What was she doing? “They’re the only thing that keep him from drawing TOO much attention to us, except, well, at times like these, obviously, where nobody is counting the bodies anyways. The Branded are just about the only thing Furorem is scared of.”

Caroline smiled. It could’ve been victoriously, but to me it just looked tired. “We have a plan,” she confided. 

“What--?!” I all but squawked, then quieter, “Cari, we weren’t going to tell--”

“Too late,” she replied quickly, “Mellite, we need your help. We need to know what the angelic royal sigil looks like. We-- well, I-- have a plan. A good one.”

“You can’t imitate a Branded soldier,” Mellite protested, “nobody would believe that.” 

“I’m not going to imitate one of them,” she replied determinedly, “I’m going to imitate one of their victims.”


	8. National Help-A-Human Day

I left the group after Alberto was gone, and it was silent. I left quickly, not wanting the others to see me upset any longer. I needed them to see me as capable, strong. I checked the Gym-- monster still there, still alive and circling, still not too interested in coming out-- and then walked away and up into the English wing. 

It seemed that without a destination in mind, I was unable to stop walking. I climbed the stairs to the third level of the building, where it should’ve been brightly lit. The third floor was always brightly lit with it’s large windows on the east and west ends of the hall. Underwater the two windows were towering dark rectangles, black as chalkboards, but taunt with the knowledge that a monsterous face could appear outside of them at any given moment. 

I allowed my eyes to adjust to the dimmer lighting of the smaller space for a moment, willing the lantern lighting from so far away downstairs to reach a little further. When it didn’t snake any more up the steps I sighed and pulled my flashlight out, already calculating in my head the battery usage. I clicked it on nonetheless, and the vaguely foreboding hallway was washed in a sharp light that cast long and eerie shadows. 

Suddenly, the windows looked less like taunt black walls and more like the portholes of a submarine, with light that bounced back and made them gleam. 

I looked down and fiddled with the flashlight dial until the light the lense was emitting dispersed into a fuller, less angular beam. As I looked up and began to walk forwards again, I walked directly into Jaoel, who had apparently materialized next to me and stood there waiting for my attention, saying nothing until I accidentally crashed into him. 

I stepped back and realized with an unpleasant start that I was, in fact, still crying. 

“Darcy?” He looked worried and glowy in the soft light, and paused for a moment as though he might, in fact, hug me. “What do you want?” I hissed accusingly between hiccupy sobs. “Did somebody go outside?” He countered in an equally charged tone. 

The vehemence in both our tones was enough that we very well could be arguing, but he confused me by giving me a polite amount of space and watching me carefully, with wide eyes, his arms uncrossed, and his palms facing me in quiet offer of genuine human compassion. 

I may or may not have yelled at him then, something along the lines of “why are you even here and why are you even helping us and who even are you?” But at the last second the “who” changed to a “what”. 

What even are you? 

And suddenly his features were hard and closed off again, his arms crossed squarely across his chest. “If somebody went outside, they’re as good as dead,” he said cooly. I think I must’ve looked at him incredulously, because he openly glared at me. 

Suddenly I had a new respect for him. He was frightening, how had I missed it? 

“If you know something helpful, tell me. If not, then please get out of my way,” I said, quietly but evenly. 

When I say he looked pained, the sudden sting of it flashing across his features, I don’t mean in the Edward-Cullen-y Bad-Teen-Romance-y “I-dream-but-i’m-a-monster” kind of way. That sort of pain is the facial expression that coincides with unrequited love or constipation. No, when I say he looked pained I mean the kind of pain that coincides with hot-poker torture, or having one’s body be set on fire. It was a sort of frozen, contained reaction, and I realized then that him thinking about breaking the Bond had the same effect as him actually saying anything aloud. 

“I want to tell you,” he started, “but I-- I’m not strong enough. Rogziel, he--”

After a moment of the two of us staring at one another in the hallway, he seemed to crumple in on himself. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. 

“It’s alright, I suppose,” I replied. It seemed like the only thing to say, whether anything was alright or not. 

“You should go back to your people,” he said, “they need you right now.” I had been planning on going back soon, I really had, what with flashlight battery to think about and all, but now that he said it I realized I simply wasn’t ready. I hummed noncommittally, which would’ve been a challenge to his attempt to suggest what I should and shouldn’t do perhaps, but then pushed past him and farther down the hallway. He didn’t follow me.

Where did I go on the third floor when I realized I was crying for real? The washroom. As though all the impossible tragedy that had washed over me without real processing had suddenly piled up and reduced me to a normal teenage girl. Never reacted to stress like a normal teenage girl before, but naturally, I thought sarcastically, it makes complete sense that I start today. 

The real problem with my lack of experience bathroom-crying was that I couldn’t even get the paper towel to come out so I could dry my eyes, my hands were shaking so fiercely. I fought valiantly with the paper towel dispenser and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand in frustration, wanting back my clear vision. As I sighed in relief upon finally getting a paper towel, I assumed I was alone, a fairly logical assumption given our current world, until I heard a cool, “Ah! Fangs. Just who I wanted to see.”

Too startled too even curse-- a new all time low-- I stumbled around and bumped against the sink counter. 

How do I describe Romaniel? He was imposing. He took up more space than the laws of matter and atoms and all that had wanted to afford him. I saw his wings as fire too, but while Jaoel seemed to radiate a deadly glow, Romaniel wore his fire like a warning. As though he meant to say:“This didn’t kill me, neither can you.” His wings brushed the tiled floor of the bathroom, and he had a similar but slightly lighter olive complexion as Jaoel, not immediately placeable as a citizen from any particular part of earth. He had a buzzed head, ageless eyes, and a smile like he was watching a fire he’d set into kindling slowly leap up and begin to lick at the wood.

His wings had the same scars as Jaoel’s. A circle on each with a cross through it. So less likely was it an old scar of punishment, or torture. It seemed fairly impossible for them to have identical scars from an accident. This was more like a family crest. A mark of belonging. Or a brand. 

The puffy pink skin looked like a letter seal, pressed into wax. It looked like it had hurt like hell. 

“And where is Braces?” He drawled, watching me from across the small room. I knew that voice. He thought he could do the mind control thing on me, like Jaoel had tried. Oh, was he ever in for a surprise. “Who?” I replied innocently, trying to keep my voice calm like the answer was being mind controlled out of my mouth, and not like I was clenching the countertop behind the small of my back until my knuckles turned white out of terror. 

“You know,” he said, crossing his ankles and leaning his weight against the wall between two stall doors, “shorter, pudgy, in a near constant state of unfiltered panic, metal mouth.” 

I paused, then asked, “Disney?” He nodded, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from angrily exploding at him for describing my friend in such a dismissive way. He smiled, and it was 1000 times scarier than any glare of Jaoel’s. And that’s saying something because, as I’d recently discovered, Kalaziel Jaoel can be pretty damn terrifying. 

“Ahhhh, yes,” he continued, “that’s the one…. What? You can give him a nickname and I can’t?” As we’d been speaking my right hand had been slowly traveling to my back pocket, as my left held the counter tight. In my back pocket was my swiss army knife, a reassuring weight. 

But really, a two inch blade against all that fiery angelic power? What was I thinking? There are good plans, and then there the plans I come up with when cornered in the third floor bathrooms by ethereal beings. 

“What do you want?” I snapped, fingers finally slipping around the handle, and the nail of my thumb latching onto the divit that flipped open the largest blade. “Verrrrry glad you asked, Fangs,” he responded, straightening, “my name is Romanial,” he announced, rolling the R like a Bond villian, “and I come baring advice. Try asking your Jaoel for keywords. The Bond causes excruciating pain, yes, but he should be able to make out a few words.” He reached forwards and gave me a pat on the cheek, but nothing else, as I sank into the sink that pressed against my back. 

“Is it national help-a-human day up in heaven?” I asked when he was finally moving away. He laughed, but it seemed to be to an inside joke with only himself, then said, “I have far less disgustingly pure reasons than your darling Jaoel for wanting you to hurry up and figure things out. I don’t come directly from heaven, Fangsy, though I know I look the part, and I do hope you take my advice without further complaint. I’m centuries old and I haven’t the time.”

“Yeah, well,” I struggled for a moment, then continued, “I might be the leader of the last group of the human race.” He didn’t talk like Jaoel at all. “Oh, please, don’t be so self centred, Fangs,” he whined, “Rochester had others. Caelum! And Jaoel seems to think you’re smart!” 

“There are other schools?! Other humans alive?!” I asked, trying to keep the excitement down in my voice. He laughed. “Fangs. I’m not Jaoel. I don’t do the whole “dancing around the Bond” bs. Let me be exceedingly clear: I could tell you, but I don’t want to, and I’m not going to.”

“Why are you here then?” I asked shortly. Did he know I wasn’t being compelled? Could he tell? I had my knife open in my right hand, hidden behind my back, but now I felt no real use for it. Petty violence seemed less effective than keeping this guy talking. 

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he replied, avoiding my question, “I’m not here on official business like your Jaoel.” That wasn’t really news…. I knew Jaoel had been sent to us, but that he wanted to disobey and help us, right? “Who is Rogziel?” I tried. He shook his head as if being extra patient for a toddler. “Again, I could tell you, but I don’t have a little crush on you, or the romantic idea of humans holding hands everywhere and defying the system heroically so they can run off into the sunset. I really don’t see the incentive.”

I was losing him. I managed out a: “wait, how can you disobey the Bond? Are you Bonded?”

He smirked. “Toodles, Fangs. KEYWORDS!” And then he was gone, blinked out of existence. He disappeared not like a ghost, but like an impatient mirage. He simply no longer cared to be there, and then the bathroom was empty and silent, barring my breathing and its echos. In his wake was the overwhelming smell of lavendar, along with something herby, like rosemary and.... something sweet? Rose? Lilac? I’m really not a flowers girl. The closest match I could think of at the time were the fresh cut flowers in the garden store across the street from my dad’s car repair garage.

I would later learn that it was in fact a fabricated rose scent, a side effect of an angel working hard on maintaining their designed human appearance. For those with less practice, the smell was stronger, sickeningly sweet to the point of noticeability, and for those who stretched their visage too far, the scent turned to that of roses that had began to rot.

I felt like during our short meeting I’d asked the questions, but he’d received all the answers.

I somehow found myself in one of the classrooms, an english room. Empty, and left unlocked during all the panic. A few loose papers were strewn about the floor, but the majority of the school supplies had gone with the students-- after all the public schooling system of our country was nothing if not a place to learn to grab what was yours. The desks and chairs were upturned and on their sides, and the computer along with its monitor and a variety of office supplies lay strewn behind the teacher’s desk. The only real mess came in the form of the bookshelves along the windowed side of the classroom. They’d up and spewed their books half the length of the classroom during the shaking, and now the papercopies had made a motley pile, almost like a slumbering beast across the far wall. 

I stooped to the nearest chair, and righted it. My mind wasn’t somewhere else, and it certainly wasn’t with me. It was nowhere, an inbetween location between processing the present, and formulating separate thoughts about the past and future. A grey murky space for silence. I righted a desk for the chair, and then proceeded to set down my flashlight on the floor, pointing at the windows as I worked to pick up and properly place all the desks and the chairs. 

When I’d finished them all and dragged them into neat little rows, like a classroom set up tidy for invisible ghost students, I continued to gather up the books and put them back into their shelves. After that I swept the broken computer and stapler and stick-it notes under the desk, and wiped the dust that had fallen from the ceiling off the desk’s surface with a large sweeping arm gesture. 

It didn’t matter that the english wing had 9 other classrooms in identical states of disrepair. This room, 310, had been my room. The one I’d watched out the windows of for each and every season, waiting for the orangy- yellow light of summer to return to the skyline, and the misty blue of winter fog to roll away. From the third floor we could see over the rooftops of the houses and straight on to the ocean, on the calm side of the island. Farther in the distance were the mountains: dark green with pine trees close by, and pale blue in the distance across the stripe of the ocean, and farther still a dusky purple outline of more on clearer days. I didn’t wonder if they were underwater now too, I just remembered. This class had been the one I hadn’t had with Ace, or with any of my other friends. I’d sat in the back, and taken notes straight into the front and back covers of my novels-- I’d bought them well-used, and I didn’t mind in the slightest further inking them up. I hadn’t once gotten an A on a writing assignment, but I’d enjoyed the stories, the novels. This class had been a peaceful time of the day, a time in which I didn’t have to talk to anybody. It had been my favourite part of my school day. 

I picked up a white board marker from where it had rolled clean across the room, and then when over to the board. ‘WE NEED TO TALK. PRIVATELY.’ I scrawled across its expanse. Jaoel would know it was for him. 

I sat down on the floor underneath the whiteboard and tried to convince myself that talking to Jaoel without the others was to protect them. So many of them were still clinging to belief even when belief was trying to kill us. I tried to wrap this around my brain, but not without a familiar pang of guilt.

Then I tried to find an explanation for why I was turning away from Disney. Disney was known. I knew him best. But he didn’t really know me. Since everything had happened, all I’d been feeling was unknowable. I felt guilty not telling the others about my conversations with Jaoel, but I felt less guilt about not confiding in Disney about this secret. After all before the After Disney couldn’t even be counted on to not tell Ace Diesel I had a crush on him, or fess up to my dad that we’d snuck out of the house after curfew.

Yes, that’s what it was. I didn’t want panic, with the kids. I wanted to contain the supernatural, keep it away from them. And I didn’t want to let Disney in on it, because he couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. 

Or I was just playing hero by myself so there was no one I had to justify myself to, and nobody to second guess my decisions, making them the right decisions by default. Damn. 

I leaned my head back against the wall, and it settled uncomfortably against the whiteboard-marker holding shelf. The light of my flashlight illuminated the room to its corners, from the windows to the door. 

“God, I need to brush my teeth,” I muttered to myself. I would’ve done nearly anything, in that moment, for a toothbrush and paste, or a hot shower. Then I laughed at my own choice of wording. God wanted me dead, he wasn’t about to help me clean my teeth. I vaguely wondered if searching through the many full lockers, crowbar style, for shampoo or soap would be disrespectful. I considered getting up while I was waiting, going down to the offices and searching the nurses office. Did nurses’ offices have toothbrushes? 

Something was moving in the corner of my vision, which made no sense because when did it get darker? 

It wasn’t until the shadow in the hall was halfway through the door that I realized it had a human shape. I stood sharply, banging my head against the marker holding shelf, and cursed. I had nothing to swing at them, and I felt exposed. I grabbed for a whiteboard eraser, cursed again, and pulled out my pocket knife. 

“Hey, hey, hey, hey--!” came Jaoel’s voice, sharply from the shadow. He brought his hands up in a defensive motion, and for a moment while my eyes adjusted and his face came into view I thought he was saying silently, “don’t hurt me with that thing,” so I lowered the small blade, and made a show of putting it back away. In retrospect, his features were definitely saying “don’t hurt yourself with that thing.” 

“Make some fucking noise when you move,” I grumbled, taking a step back and leaning against the wall. He genuinely apologized then, saying earnestly, “I’m sorry. I don’t need to make a lot of noise, and I’ve gotten used to walking quite silently. I’d forgotten for a moment that you can’t …. Sense things like my people can.”

“I’ve had an idea,” I replied, changing the subject, “what if you just told me a word or two? The important ones? Could you get out a word or two?” 

He paused, nodded, and then paused again, slightly pale, as if contemplating the consequences of his cooperating. Finally he nodded again, and mumbled, “will you sit down with me then?”

I agreed, quiet, and to my surprise he motioned and led me back over to the cool tile floor where I’d just been sitting at the front of the classroom. I realized his avoidance of the desks wasn’t just to avoid the sickeningly normal student vibe that would just be too much, but also because he needed to brace himself against a ground and wall that wouldn’t move. 

He looked up at me as I sat, pushing my knife into my back pocket, and it was a strange look. Oddly religious, but strained, in a way, as though he was the one observing a miracle of faith that was not quite right. 

He took a deep breath, as though preparing to jump into cold water, his hands in white-knuckled fists and pressed onto the tile floor. “E-- Ah- Ack…”

I surged forward on pure instinct to catch him as he began to fall sideways. He turned from me to spit blood onto the ground, and then looked up at me with glassy eyes. I checked him for a pulse out of habit, and he wrapped my hand, holding it like a lifeline, so tightly it hurt. 

“E-- Eden,” he managed. For a moment the room was silent save for his laboured breathing. “Eden,” I echoed back in a whisper, feeling a…. I don’t know, a rush I guess, of desire. The word sounded so important rolling off my tongue, “Eden,” I whispered again, and I couldn’t stop saying it, even though I knew it was hurting Jaoel, even as I watched Jaoel wince over and over again. Twin tear tracks had traced their way down the sides of his face and into his hair. “Eden, eden, eden,” I whispered reverently, “Jaoel. Eden.” 

He caught my chin, in the hand not currently held by mine, with a surprisingly still, strong grip, and forced me to look at him, before he grit out, “Other…. Word…. Al-- Ack…. Ughnnnn…. A- Al- Almighty.”

When he’d finished a little blood ran down his cheek, and chin, from the corner of his mouth. This wasn’t something anyone could’ve tortured out of him. He did this to himself. Because he’d convinced himself it was the right thing to do. 

The word Eden was still reverberating around in my head, making it spin. I couldn’t picture Eden itself, I had no image, but I could clearly see it carefully cursive-printed, just four black inked letters on an old white piece of parchment. The desire for something more to that memory that wasn’t mine was intense. I wanted those four letters like I’d never wanted anything else in my life. The intensity of it wasn’t terrifying at the time, not until later. At the time, it was exhilarating. 

Jaoel turned and curled into me, and I let him sob into my shirt. 

I will never fully understand the pain of breaking the Bond, but I know now it’s more than just physical pain. The Bond makes you love, and breaking it would make anyone feel like they’ve betrayed somebody they truly love. It’s meant to be for true love. What Rogziel did, Bonding his children to him, is disgusting, and wrong. He took away the opportunity of them ever finding love with anybody else. It wasn’t just pain for Kalaziel Jaoel…. Jay, when he sobbed into my shirt for upwards of a half hour. When I rubbed comforting circles into his back, unsure if he was present enough to feel them. 

Finally, he shuttered, and looked up. I whispered, “Almighty,” once, and then again, and he nodded, smiling at the weight of the thing he’d just accomplished, and then whispering back, “not God,” in between the echoes of sobs.

I don’t know how long we would’ve stayed there, but there was yelling. Big yelling. The Gym has broken, I thought frantically, the school is going to flood. We’re going to die. We’ll be lucky to drown before that thing gets to us. Or Jaoel’s master has come for him. We’re going to die. Or--

We stumbled to our feet, me leaning sideways a moment on the wall. Jaoel grabbed my forearm, helping me to stay vertical. His hand slid down to hold mine, and we ran. Ran straight towards the yelling.


	9. Mellite

Somebody was going to cut the angelic symbol, a cross within a circle, into their skin with a sharp piece of raft strapping, and that person was going to be me. 

“It was my idea,” Caroline protested, “I’ll do it.” 

“Absolutely not. If anyone’s going to risk bleeding out over a half-baked plan, it’s going to be me,” I insisted. “Do we have to argue about THIS?” Mellite demanded, “this does not seem like the most important thing right now.”

“Why? Caroline asked indignantly. “Because I’m oldest,” I replied. Usually this sort of back and forth was over the last chocolate at Christmas, or who got the hotel bed to themselves on summer vacation. 

The sun was rising again. Soon Furorem would wake, and undoubtedly begin his horrible colosseum game again. I glanced over. Chao was awake, turning rather obviously away from the sun. As two of his cronies began to argue over something, he grabbed a raft tie for support and heaved the contents of his stomach-- presumably 90% darkly coloured alcohol, and 10% food-- this guess going off of the partying and heated gambling game that had preoccupied his small possie last night long after Furorem had passed out, and long after the LUDUS LATRUNCULARIUS had ended for the evening. Thankfully, Chao did so in the farthest east part of the camp, so the eternal, one-directional tide washed it swiftly away. 

After laughing at him, the arguing guards moved on in favour of harassing yesterday’s human reigning champion. 

“I will do it,” I said with finality to Caroline, “you hold the makeshift knife.” She replied “fine” with enough anger for me to know she meant it.

The poor woman who’d won last night began to increase in volume as she protested the advancement of Chao’s guards. Mellite slipped away, to go help anyway he could without being obvious. She didn’t seem to be protesting fighting again, just protesting the guards, who were now leering at the people beside her, asking which ones of them would kill her for the food a match winner would receive. 

“Come on,” I prompted Caroline, “don’t be scared to hurt me, I’ll be fine. Let’s do it now, and we can stop this, at least for a now.”

“I’m not scared,” she replied evenly, and her voice held no hint of lie. 

“Gratiae Dei!” Furorem shouted, sitting up and breaking the surface of the water. He had all eyes on him as he bit out, “quis ex vobis clausamque.”

“What is he--” I cut Caroline off, and replied, “he said ‘won’t somebody shut her up’.”

The Custodi with the long white hair who’d dragged me here whispered with Furorem for a moment before shooting off underwater, and parting the shadow creatures beneath us. Furorem’s terrifyingly delighted stare swept the four rafts languidly, before settling on mine.

More specifically me. Or Caroline. It was impossible to tell until he began to slink towards us through the brightening water. 

It was me. He was headed for me. 

“Take me,” Caroline begged, throwing her sharp raft piece behind her and sliding forwards until her hands held the edge, “I want the food so bad your lordship, let me at her! I’ll--”

“Shut up, vermis,” he snapped in his thickly accented english, “vos. Mare sit in te. In sanguine tuo.”

I almost replied, before realizing admitting I could understand them was the worst move possible. 

“W-what?” I said instead, not really needing to fake the fear or confusion, “I- I can’t understand.”

You. The sea is within you. In your blood.

“Get in,” he said in english, “kill her--” he made a sweeping gesture towards the champion woman “-- or I kill your…. How do you say? Soror….? Ah! Your sister.”  
I nodded and slid into the water, and god it was freezing, but I was already numb. I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t. Morally, perhaps, as horrible as that sounds, it’s the truth. After all, I was willing to leave her and all the others here behind to certain death while me and Cari made for Seato. But physically? With my hands? To press her underwater until her eyes opened foggy and the little bubbles that lived in your head and not your lungs slid slowly out of her nose and ears? To watch her slip away and into the awning maw of one of the eyeless, noseless, earless, shadows that were only grey flesh with rowed, crooked teeth? No. I couldn’t do that. I knew I couldn’t.

Which begged the question: what the hell was I going to do? We could only grapple so long before the guards tired of us. If it was just me.... But it wasn’t. Chao had full plans on hurting Caroline if I didn’t give him what he wanted-- which was a good show and a bloody death. Which was a problem.

I didn’t risk a glance back at Caroline. I knew she had the sharpened plastic strap. I knew how strong she was. But could she do it to herself. Could she succeed in lying to Furorem’s face alone?

I took a gasping breath, shocked by the cold and the pulling weight of my clothes. I’d missed the hoodie I’d discarded every shivering night spent here, but now I felt no regret, or embarrassment, kicking off my jeans. The water was too thick as it passed through them, the denim desperate to cling to the ocean as I tread water. I might’ve been raised in a conservative family, but I wasn’t an idiot. 

I may not have been prepared for the end of the world conditions we were currently facing, but at least I was wearing fairly modest boy short boxers. That was something.   
I kicked forwards, attempting to draw the attention away from Caroline as my jeans slithered off into the darkness. She needed time. 

The champion was thrown into the water by Chao, who’d recovered from losing his liquor this morning by drinking some more, and she swam cautiously towards me. Underneath us, the two guards who never sat still, or stopped arguing, circled, having no need for air.   
As we came within punching distance of each other-- how else to measure a oceanic colosseum-- I tried to give her the reassuring “I don’t want to fight you” facial expression. She got close enough to grab my hair, and that she did, a solid handful, and yanked me underwater. 

For a moment I panicked. After all my determination that drowning another prisoner was impossibly wrong, was she going to kill me? But her mouth opened slightly and she mouthed one word, an english word. 

“Sun.”

I squinted at her, and we switched positions underwater, her firm and admittedly painful grip on my hair creating an excellent illusion of fighting. Sun….?

Oh. 

“Son.”

She had a son. 

As we surfaced, I nodded towards the raft with Caroline, and she grimaced in recognition and understanding. It looked perfectly like a glare. I shoved her under this time, and followed, kicking. I grabbed her arms above the elbows, but didn’t really scratch.   
What the latin-speaking idiots didn’t share were the human signs that carried across language barriers. I pointed at her neck, and ran a finger along mine. In any other context a threat. I let my eyes roll back in my head, and then mined the universal two fingers for run. 

I didn’t need to mouth anything. 

She repeated the motions back to me in a scrambled version but her eyes were dialed in through the salt water, she understood. The guards below watched with vague interest, but didn’t seem alarmed. 

We surfaced for breath and the I pushed her under by her head, yanked her hair, and she went limp. I thanked the forces that hadn’t been good to any of us until just now that the guards swam up in excitement to tell either Chao or Furorem. She turned and swam down and under the rafts, to the East where the current went, without looking at me, making her break for it. 

We saw it at the same time, her and I. An enormous black shape taking form, its eyeless slits opening and closing, its jaw opening slowly and drawing water in and down like a riptide. She turned began swimming frantically back to me. I shouldn’t go TOWARDS that, I distinctly thought, there’s no way she can outrun THAT. 

How different was it to leave a stranger in prison, than to run from a goner.   
I realized I really couldn’t do either. 

I swam towards her, and by default towards the engulfing shadow thing. She reached out for me, and I grabbed her wrists. We both kicked frantically towards the nearest raft, and as I was forced to open my mouth and lungs and take a breath-- a breath of water-- she slouched unconscious into my arms. 

It had happened again. The water was in my lungs and I couldn’t breath but I could, I was fine, I was alive. I hauled her over my shoulder and kicked desperately for the surface light.

We emerged to chaos and a series of gunshots fired into the open sky. 

“They…. They left!” That was Mellite’s voice, “they’re gone, they’re up in the sky!” More gunfire, this time from a machine gun. The rounds shot straight up into the air with a harsh chk-chk-chk. I hauled the unconscious woman up onto the raft in front of us, and several arms came down to help me. The weight lessened blissfully until I was just shoving her legs out of the water. I didn’t dare look down. If the thing was still rising towards us, it’s maw gaping and black as the depths of hell, I didn’t want to know. Maybe it would swallow me up in one gulp and I wouldn’t feel a thing. Maybe it would chomp me straight in half and I would have to watch as it gobbled down my legs and everything under my shoulders came apart in the salt water. 

I panicked, and couldn’t get a solid grip on the wet plastic. I slipped twice, cutting my knees up on the buckles of the straps. The people were still yelling and moving, some trying to jump into the water now and swim for it. “Don’t”, I wanted to say. The people attached to the hands who’d hauled the woman up were clumsily performing CPR on her waterlogged form. 

As I finally got a proper grip and began kicking, one of the monsters down below passed under us so near the arch of my foot was torn open by what felt like barnacles on it’s back. The entire raft swayed dangerously at the resulting displacement of water, and I was tumbled right underneath it. 

There was no sunlight underneath it, and no air. For a moment I was pressed between the rough edge of the monsters back and the firm plastic of the roof, in the pitch black. I could only tell my eyes were open from the saline sting. 

Finally the monster passed by, and I struggled forwards. There was no way I could still be alive, no way I could be alive without breath…. I was still breathing. The water was moving in and out of my lungs. I wasn’t imagining it. I took a deeper breath and felt it calm my stomach, and clear my head. I could use this, I could stay down here, and make sure I didn’t get hit, and then try to find Caroline. I just needed to stay level-headed.   
I swam through the shadows of the monsters swirling slowly, and past guards so busy arguing and trying to get the attention of the monsters they barely noticed me. Mostly I floated forwards, like a slightly weighted down body, but when I was confident they weren’t looking I would give a large kick to propel myself forwards. The monsters no longer seemed interested in me at all, they were ignoring me as diligently as they were ignoring the guards. In between kicks, as I floated forwards, I would breath. It felt like incorrect breaststroke; instead of leaning up to break the water and take a breath, I would lean down to avoid the eyes of the guards.

Finally I arrived under the shadow of Caroline’s raft, and subtly kicked my way up. I broke the surface and coughed the salt water from my lungs as quietly as I could. Even with me essentially puking a litre or two of water up and burning the hell out of my trachea, Caroline managed to not notice me. “Cari,” I whispered hoarsely. I’d wanted her to distract the guards with our original plan, get them worried, have them feel the need to look around for Branded soldiers coming their way. What the hell had she done instead.   
Caroline turned from where she was searching the sky with a hand to her eyes to block the sun, and across the now half-empty raft, Mellite turned to. He had twin tear tracks etched into the dirt on his now scrubby face, and seemed to be bleeding profusely from his chest. 

As the water spun around the entire camp, and he was knocked against the raft and washed, I realized it wasn’t a gaping wound but a delicate sigil carved across the entirety of his chest with the tip of a knife. The sigil Caroline had explained, of the Branded. He flashed me a determined smile and it was all I could do to not holler back. In happiness for his support, or in apology for asking what I had asked of him, I wasn’t quite sure.   
Caroline was kneeling in front of me when I next looked up. She simply nodded for a moment, but I understood. Seeing Mellite, one of their own with the Brand, it had completely fooled them. The gunfire had been Furorem and his right hand woman. Maybe Chao. They were panicked. I went to ask her if she was okay, when she fixed her gaze somewhere below my eyes. I touched my chin, then my shoulder in concern. Was I bleeding? I was running a tentative hand across my collarbone when she managed, “your neck.”

I whipped a hand to my neck, the other steadying on the edge of the raft, and gasped as I felt two giant gashes. On each side. They were slick, but with water or blood I was unsure. They weren’t over my carotid arteries or veins, but nonetheless…. My neck. “Am I bleeding?!” I asked, looking at my clean hand and then pressing my palm back to my neck and then inspecting it again. There was no blood. 

“Gills,” Caroline said quietly, “you have gills.” I stared at her blankly as I probed the gently opening and closing slits. Four of them. Like little creatures of their own, with a synchronized breathing pattern. They seemed confused in the air, but nonetheless intook air until I had so much oxygen I was dizzy drunk on it. I scrambled up onto the raft and clamped my palms over the four gills, stopping them from intaking any more air. I took my hands away once I stopped feeling tiny breaths beneath them, but Caroline only shook her head, continuing to blink at them as they began to open and close instantly again. 

“Do you think I have them?” Caroline asked, in fascinated horror, “maybe the mermaids drugged the water!” “No--” I began. No, drugs can affect the chemical balances in your body, but they can’t do this. No, gills are an evolutionary trait that evolved onto fish, and I suppose also onto mermaids, but there’s no way I should be able to have them. No, whatever you do: don’t test that idea. 

She dove into the water, only to emerge a moment later. Not due to the monsters down there, or the trigger happy guards who were still arguing about what to do with rifles and machine guns ready, but because she’d gulped down and lungful of salt water, and now had to hold the raft’s straps to puke up that water. She heaved like I had after escaping the truck when I’d first had to swim for the surface, after surviving a car crash and hitting my head three times on the truck’s headrest. I held her hair, the one slick dreadlock of a ponytail she had, just like I used to when she and Eli got the flu. 

The two of them had always got the flu at the same time, and my parents always paid more attention to Eli, and I always ended up caring for Caroline until I got the flu too.   
She touched my gills curiously, before coughing out in a rasping voice, “I don’t got ’em,”

“GET BACK ON THAT RAFT, PAULO VERMES!!” I scrambled to help Caroline back up before the guard reached us. 

“Sir, we can’t outrun them,” Chao said nervously over the waves. I translated in my head, and repeated it for Caroline. 

“We’re not running,” Furorem replied furiously, daring Chao to continue to fight, “we’re relocating to a more desirable area.” 

I could’ve danced. 

“Where?” Furorem’s right hand woman asked shortly. He looked for a moment as though he was about to snap at her too, before sighing as though she was just being slow to catch up, and said, “SeaTo.”

The word seemed to hold as much meaning for the guards as it did for me and Caroline, because they all grinned in excitement and anticipation. Finally I realized what the guards were trying to do below us with the monsters. They were hooking them up to the raft like horses. We were going to travel together as a caravan. That’s why the rafts themselves were so oddly plain. There was no need for paddles, just tough plastic coated straps, when your floating prison travelled via giant dinosaur fish monster things. 

The rafts began to jerk forwards, and the monster’s backs-- five of them-- began to break the surface of the water in front of us rhythmically, like an odd pod of whales. It was fast, but not as fast as the Custodi usually travelled. We hunkered down beside the the other people, those who’d gone to swim for freedom, as every human was shoved back onto a raft. I wound one arm around a strap, and threw the other around Caroline’s middle, grabbing a solid grip on the other side of her. She held on too, with both hands, onto a buckle. 

“What happened while I was underwater?” I whispered into Caroline’s ear. The raft jostled and my front teeth connected painfully for a moment with the side of her skull. She squished sideways to reply, the sound of the water slapping against plastic enough to drown our voices from the following-- and still arguing-- group of Custodi. “I asked Mellite to carve the sigil onto my chest, or my shoulder. We were panicking. He traced it lightly just under my collar bones, and then he told me to close my eyes, and he grabbed my arm. His grip just kept tightening and tightening but the knife didn’t touch me so I opened my eyes and he’d already cut on his own chest.” 

My grip around her waist tightened. I was indebted to him, a man-- no a boy-- no, I don’t even know if he can be called that. A mer-boy? I was indebted to a merboy I barely knew.   
“They didn’t need convincing when it came from him,” she continued, “they said he was the weakest member they had, and of course the Branded would go after him. He lied and said he’d been given some message to deliver, that the Branded were coming for all of them, and that was all it took for Furorem.” 

“It worked,” I said in disbelief, letting my face rest against the hot plastic of the raft, “it worked, it worked.”


	10. Introducing: Almighty

Darcy: 

It felt like centuries, descending the two flights of stairs. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Certainly not in the last 24 hours. How illogical of me. I had a pounding headache. Or maybe there was a pounding somewhere, not in my head. Jaoel pulled my hand around each corner, and I was grateful for it. Without him I might not have made it down the stairs at such a sprinting pace. 

Which was ridiculous. Me? I was supposed to be capable. I was supposed to tug him along, and take care of him and the others. And here I was not even capable of taking care of myself. 

….

They were crowded around the front doors, the flooded indent where the ocean came right into the inner set of glass. It was Alberto. He was pressed up against the inner door. It hadn’t even been 24 hours. 

He had to know we had no way of getting him back into the school. The fact that it was him, and not a submarine from the coastguard confirmed our fears that help was, in fact, not on the way. 

For a moment I was relieved, as this depressing news was better than some of my more desperate assumptions about what the shouting had been. The monster was still in the gym. No evil angels. But then I pushed forwards, past Jay, and got a better look at his face. He wasn’t trying to get in. He was trying to get my attention. Desperately. 

Acacia was beating on the glass, and then trying to yank the doors apart and let him in. And then he was yelling at her not to but we couldn’t hear him and Daisy and Jordan were pulling her away. Alberto was wide eyed, even in the salt water, and when he saw me, he pressed his hand up to the glass. 

We all saw the hulking shadow pass behind him. We all saw the shape that was just a nondescript darkness form an underbelly.... and then an eye. We all drained of color, paralyzed where we stood. 

Alberto’s hand flattened on the glass. On his palm were two words printed carefully in permanent marker. Seato. Florida.

I lurched forwards and nodded, yelling that I’d read what he’d said, and that I’d figure it out. I didn’t think twice about asking him to explain, I just motioned behind him, and yelled that there was something out there, and motioned for him to swim up, to oxygen. To get away. 

There was a hissing and then a sound like nails being dragged over metal through the entire entrance way. Alberto took off his mask. Strong arms were there, holding me, pulling me away from Alberto.... Jaoel. 

Alberto was mouthing things in spanish straight to Acacia now, putting his mask back on to breath, and then saying more. Acacia was screaming one long, unintelligible, open-mouthed scream. 

A second eye joined the first, and then a gaping mouth, ragged with teeth and peeling gums. I don’t think I’ll ever close my eyes again without seeing that mouth. It was death. 

That’s the only way I can describe them. The Asorbeats. They are death.

I think I screamed and kicked and punched at Jaoel. He tried to cover my eyes, tried to drag me away, but I struggled against him. 

….

We could see his face. 

….

The Death, the Asorbeat, it clamped its razor jaws around his stomach and dragged him away and up. His face, as he was impaled, was terror. A plume of blood hit the glass. 

Jaoel said “it was an Asorbeat. An engulfer. They destroy what is left after the Wave” to nobody in particular, his strength to hold me gone, and I slipped to the floor. 

I blinked and suddenly we were in the library, the doors locking. And Jaoel was there with food but I couldn’t eat it, and pain medications, but I couldn’t swallow them, though I tried. I coughed three advils in a row back into his hand, soggy and slippery, their outer shells bleeding colour, and finally he sighed, giving up. 

He was a soldier, and I was supposed to be a survivalist. But I couldn’t do much more than sit numbly until the nausea passed, shaking and holding hands with Disney. 

I didn’t sleep for a span of time, or if I did, it was upright, with my back pressed to the wall, and leaning against Disney. Eventually I drifted in and out of a nightmares, which was at least undeniably sleep. Disney way there, Jay had left. Finally I blinked, and when I woke, people were talking again, I was on my side with my head pillowed on Disney’s hoodie, and evidently it had been several hours. 

Jaoel stooped and handed me a protein bar and an advil. No trouble this time. He sat down next to me, his frame blocking my face from the rest of the room. He wanted my attention, and after what we’d been through and the undeniable truth that any next choice could be our last, I was inclined to give it. 

“I’ve flown,” he said quietly. 

“Pardon?” I replied, sitting up. Over his shoulder the others were talking quietly, sitting in groups with their backs to the book shelves. “Flown,” he repeated, “that thing you call teleporting, when I disappear? I’m just taking off, I supposed relatively fast by your standards. I’ve flown around the entire state of Florida, there’s only one blip in the water, and it’s a grey compound, undeniably human made. It must be what he meant.”

“Seato,” I said, pronouncing the word slowly, feeling it on my tongue, “it’s a safe house? A compound?”

“It looks like somebody’s safehouse,” he replied, “whether or not they let you in to stay is impossible to say, but they’re humans, and you lot stick together, right?” I nodded. We do. There’s no way other survivors would turn away us, a bunch of kids. 

“But we can’t get there,” I pointed out with frustration, “we can’t exactly follow you and sprout wings to--”

“I can take you there,” he said firmly, “I can take you to Seato, but only one at a time, and we’d have to move extremely fast through the air. If we move to slow I, and especially my passenger, won’t be able to pass through solid matter without collision.”

“Right,” I said slowly, “so you can take us there safely?” 

“I’ve…. Never tried carrying a human lifeform before, no. It will be hard on your body. The pressure will most likely limit or cut off your breathing, but it would be for less than 30 seconds. You can hold your breath for 30 seconds, right?” And thank God I trusted him in that moment, I don’t know what I’d have done if I didn’t feel he was telling the earnest truth. 

“Care to share your plans with the rest of us, oh fearless leaders?” Crashtest Lee called out, rolling over from his place atop a computer desk to glare with a kind of tired malice. He was no longer drunk, I could see it in the hardness he carried about his features, but he was valiantly pretending to be, lolling his head in a way that would’ve fooled anyone who wasn’t trying to catch him out on his bs. 

“Yes, actually,” I called back, “can we have a team meeting?” Jordan made a dismissive comment about us not being a basketball team, but shut up and followed the twins as they came forwards to settle next to me with Acacia. Disney came too, sitting next to me on the side Jaoel was not, and slipping a hand into mine out of a habit of the last twelve hours. Crashtest stayed on his desk, but he was near enough. 

“The way I see it we have two options,” I said quietly, not trying to be authoritative for once, but to impress upon them the importance of the situation, “if anyone can think of a third option, I’m all ears, but I’d say it’s like this: we can stay here, where it’s safe, and there’s food for another six months, or we can take Jaoel up on his offer and follow him to Seato.” 

“I don’t really want to starve for six months if this is simply the way of the world now,” Rose said plainly, regarding me openly, unconcerned discussing the eventuality of starvation in front of Acacia. The kid seemed to be in a daze anyway. “We need more information than that, emperor Darcy,” Crashtest complained, “what are our odds of survival via angel travel?”

“We’re not sure--” I began to admit. 

“You’re not sure,” he echoed in disbelief. “No,” I insisted, “just like we’re not sure how long this is going to last, just like we’re not sure who’s alive in Seato. It might be our families. It might be a trap. We could wait six months until we’re out of food and then go travel there, but they might all be dead by then, or the angels might have destroyed it or hell, one of those things that got Alberto might’ve chewed a hole through their walls. Granted we could go there, and any one of those things could happen, after we get there. We know our school is strong enough to resist most of that, even with the thing in the gym--”

Jaoel raised his hand like a schoolboy to interject, “if I may? It is me who is holding the thing in the Gym, and I can’t hold it forever.”

“How long?” I asked. “Two months?” he replied, “three if I have to? I’m not sure. I’ll hold it to my last breath, but if I go down keeping that barrier up then I won’t be able to take you anywhere.” I nodded. His genuity seemed to sway the room, as they were now almost taking his input as another opinion, rather than information being rather conveniently given up without interrogation. 

Two months. 

“That changes things,” I continued, “we have less time than we thought.”

“Let’s go,” Daisy said, standing. “Let’s think this through,” Jordan retorted quickly, mirroring her and rising quickly, but mostly to stop her. “Our families might be there,” Daisy pressed, and suddenly Rose was on her side, standing, but keeping Acacia close. 

“I don’t have family to run to,” Jordan replied, not angrily, but entirely matter of fact, “and I don’t like the survival statistic of “we don’t know”. If we’re all that’s left we have a duty to remain aliv--”

“Duty my ass,” Disney said vehemently, standing, “duty to who? I want to find my sister. And Darcy’s dad.” It hadn’t occurred to Jordan apparently, that there was somebody else who wasn’t trying to rush to their parents, and he looked at his shoes, nodding. “Yeah,” he said after a minute, “I guess there are people I’m hoping to find there alive too.”

“Will you stop fighting,” Acacia demanded, high and clear, “my brother died getting us this information. He knew it was safe, and good, otherwise he wouldn’t have risked his life trying to send us there. We’re going.”

And with that it was decided. 

“Give us a survival stat, fearless leader,” Crashtest called, “50/50? 75/25? 25/75?”

“I don’t know,” I impressed, “50/50? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’ll go first so--”

“No,” he said sharply, startling us all, “I’ll go first. The rest of us need you alive. Besides, there’s nobody waiting for me there.”

It was said with such venom that it took me a moment to realize he was volunteering to take a risk for me, because I was too important, and not just insulting me some more. 

That seemed vastly out of character. “What?” I managed. “I’ll go first,” he repeated, “unless you want to flip a coin.”

“Heads I go,” he said, swinging his feet over the edge of the desk, “tails you go.” He threw the quarter deftly to Disney, who caught it, surprised. “Third party,” Crashtest addressed him, “flip away.”

For a long moment Disney fumbled to flip it, but when he did it was ordinarily short and normal, and it landed in his palm with a fleshy thunk. “Heads,” he said quietly, not bothering disguising his relief. 

“Fate,” Crashtest said, hopping off the desk. “I don’t believe in fate,” I replied. He paused a moment as he came to stand next to our semi-circle, and said, “neither do I.”

**

We packed what we had into school bags. It seemed like a futile effort with what we were getting into, the packing of snacks, valuables, and keepsakes, but it also wouldn’t have felt right to leave with nothing. 

“I’m not making closing remarks,” Crashtest said dryly, in address of us all, “not because I truly believe in my chances of survival, but because I hate you all and you have absolutely no rights to my secrets.” But as he finished his voice wavered. 

“I would expect nothing else from you,” I replied, smiling at him, trying to convey both care and concern. I was starting to see through his insults, and now I was finding it very hard to hate the kid. 

“Arms of an angel,” he said shortly, with no hint of song, “fly away.” He tightened the straps to his backpack, and stood beside Jaoel. Jaoel regarded him for a short moment, before putting an arm around his waist, winding it through the straps to his backpack. 

“Hold on, hold your breath,” he said quietly, and they were gone. 

For nearly sixty seconds it was silent in the library save for our breathing. When Jaoel reappeared alone, we were hardly surprised with his magical entrance, but looked at him imploringly. “He’s fine,” he said quickly to me, out of breath like he’d run a marathon, “although perhaps we should’ve sent someone more diplomatic first. A human there asked where the hell he’d just come from and he made a derivative remark explaining how human babies are born.” 

Finally Jaoel collapsed into a sitting position on the floor, breathing deeply, and muttering, “give me a moment, and I’ll go again. I didn’t think I’d need to go quite so fast.”

Daisy stepped forwards, and said, “I’ll go next. I don’t want Lee to piss them off before any of the rest of us get over there.” Jaoel nodded, stood, and motioned her forwards. “Hold on, hold your breath.”

When he returned alone again he merely grinned, more of grimace, to tell us Daisy was fine. 

Acacia went next, with Alberto’s backpack strapped to her back, hanging down nearly to her knees. “Hold on, hold your breath,” Jaoel said, then he added, “don’t worry, I got you. You’ll be fine.” Though she didn’t seem to need comforting. 

He had to pause after Rose for a span of ten minutes, and though we fidgeted nervously, we didn’t push him. None of us wanted him too exhausted to make the next trip safely. 

When he came back from delivering Jordan, he smiled weakly at me. 

“They’ve all got a change of clothes, and they’ve told the soldiers there that a couple more are coming.” 

I smiled back. It was only me and Disney left. We’d sat in silence for the last sixty seconds, but it was a reassuring silence. A comfortable silence. I squeezed his hand as he stood, walking towards Jaoel. “Hold on, hold your breath.”

For a minute I was alone in the school. The monster banged against the walls of the gym, the piping hissed at every fluctuation of pressure, and one of the leaks in the very framework of the building dripped. For a moment I wondered if this spot would continue to be a bubble of air beneath the sea before the monster clanked again and I realized that without Jay holding it back, it would soon overtake the air with water, and swamp the place into the same blackness that was outside. 

All the things, all the normal, human things here would be gone. Suddenly I wanted to save more of the building I’d spent the last three years dispising. 

All the books. 

I ran around the Library gathering the titles I remembered loving, all the ones from my english classroom, even some I remembered my english teacher determining to be classics. Then I paused. I, right here, and right now, could determine the new classics. I could save the things worth saving. 

But what was worth saving to me would be different from what was worth saving to anyone else, and making that choice for the rest of the survivors seemed selfish, and egotistical. I collected another few, and then no more would fit into my bag. 

I wheeled out a computer cubicle, and pushed it until it fell on it’s side, and then began loading it with more books. By this time, Jaoel had appeared, and was standing near the doors to the library, watching me. 

I couldn’t bring them all. But this was better than before, better than nothing. “This doesn’t weigh more than a human,” I blurted out, “can you take it, and then me?”

I looked up at him. He was tired. He looked exhausted in a way that weighed him until he could barely stand up straight. He nodded without complaint, and took a step forwards. When he next spoke it was a new voice, one I’d not yet heard from him, a deep, gravelly voice. Still as serious, but less demanding, more asking. “Darcy, I need your strength. May I?” 

I paused, but realized he only wanted to hold my hands, his own outstretched. I stepped forwards and held both his hands in my own. “Be strong a moment,” he said, and I felt it, the tug through my arms and my ribcage, like a circuit. My knees locked, and my eyelids felt heavy, he was taking some of my energy. He breathed in, as though he’d been holding his breath, stepped back, grabbed the cubicle, and disappeared. I waited another sixty seconds and he was back, leaning against a bookshelf for support. 

“You need a minute?” I asked. He shook his head. I offered him my hands again. There was something exciting about the idea that I had energy to give just by being alive. What power. “No, I’m good.” He extended a single hand. “Come here.”

I did, and he wrapped an arm around the small of my waist, between me and my heavy bag of books. “Hold on, hold your breath,” he said quietly. I nodded, balling my fists in the fabric of the back of his jacket. 

The ground disappeared beneath us, not as though in lift off, but as though the earth had suddenly fallen away. I buried my head in his shoulder, feeling the demanding tug of gravity, and tried to concentrate on clenching my teeth together and not the wind that was crushing on all sides like we were being keelhauled by a commercial airplane. If I opened my mouth I wouldn’t be able to draw breath, but instead I knew the air already in my lungs would be ripped out. Despite all this the “difficult-on-your-puny-human-body”- pain never came. I felt alive, in a strange way.

I wasn’t paralyzed in fear. Not because I trusted him, not totally, not then. I was only able to move sensible because I was scared in that moment of the most basic of things: of falling, of passing out, of being hurt by the changing pressure. Nothing larger: not the existence of greater beings or the end of life as we knew it…. Just simple stuff. It was somehow freeing to be so completely emerged in the normalest and purest of fears. 

I looked up at Jaoel, and he was lit up. Not with fire, the fire was gone. He was lit with some kind of distinctly angelic glow that I’d somehow been missing when I’d been looking at him. Maybe the fire had it too backlit. I still can’t see any beauty or grace associated with the word angel more true than his uptilted face. Glowing. He was glowing. Kalaziel Jaoel was dangerously beautiful.

As we turned, and the pressure of gravity loosened off into what felt to me like a free fall with zero gravity, but was really much more of a controlled dive, a hand grabbed the fabric of the shoulder of my hoodie. It wasn’t Jaoel’s, both of his arms were already around me. There was a third hand vying for control of my descent back to earth and if that wasn’t already terrifying enough it was a tiny hand, with razor nails and a grip like metal. 

Jaoel was thrown away from me, and I seemed to fall up, which must’ve really just been me being pulled by the fabric of my hoodie, and suddenly I was facedown in dirt.


	11. What SeaTo Can Do For You

“Hanna wake up.”

I blinked awake in surprise at Caroline’s voice. We hadn’t stopped yet, the monsters were still pulling us along swimmingly. It was only sunset now, but I must’ve fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. “They’re talking behind us in Latin. It sounds bad. Furorem and the white haired one keep stopping and then catching up,” Caroline whispered urgently. 

I tried to gather up all the scattered pieces of my brain and squish them back into their proper locations. “..... ut sciam quid facere im,” Furorem whispered hotly from behind us and I strained to hear over the moving water. People were quiet now, with only some shuffling to be heard. “He’s saying he knows what he’s doing. I-- I think he’s defending himself.”

“Quare non potest nos ex fossa terra,” his right-hand woman hissed back, without addressing him as sir or anything else that would signify rank, “puer relinquere terrae.” 

“Who is she?” I whispered incredulously to Caroline. “What is she saying,” Caroline snapped back. “She wants to get rid of Mellite I think,” I replied, trying to keep up with her, “the “earth kid”, but it’s one of theirs. She’s mad that he’s not being cruel to us like the rest of Chao’s group. I think she’s suspicious.”

“Shit,” Caroline mumbled back. “Language,” I corrected automatically. She looked at me incredulously for a moment. “Right, nevermind,” I apologised sheepishly, “you’re right. Shit is correct.” Somehow swearing with my little sister seemed nearly as surreal as the mermaid situation. 

“How close do you suppose we are?” I continued, looking around. Water. More water. And…. “Is that something above water level?”

“Where?” she demanded. I pointed in front of us. 

“I think it is,” she said in relief. I’d like to say it was a god sent miracle that at the particular moment Furorem spotted the same grey blob we had and suddenly the Custodi were in a flurry of excitement about this new attack, and the subject of Mellite’s loyalty and therefore honesty was dropped. However if anything was true in terms of god sent anything we would not be in this situation. 

“Shh, Chao’s coming this way,” Caroline said in a low voice, dropping her head and closing her eyes. I did the same, trying to even my breathing into that of sleep. 

We stayed down as the Custodi swam excited circles around and around the rafts, Chao’s men occasionally firing empty rounds into the air. This was not going to be a sneak attack on whatever it is they were wanting to attack. I tried to peek up often without being seen, and as we continued, Furorem pushed the monsters to go faster, until the salty air stung as it filtered between my eyelashes. 

“What are we going to do when--?” Caroline was cut off by gunfire. 

Chao had been hit, in the shoulder. He was bleeding into the water and onto the raft next to him, enough blood to be solid red, not just pink. He was still upright, but all the color had drained from his face. Had one of the other’s….??

“STAND DOWN AND DROP YOUR WEAPONS,” a very english and staticy voice commanded. We’d reached the grey blob, and it was now a very solid wall in front of us. It was a cylindrical grey compound, with a story above water, and innumerable stories below water, going down, down, down into the black. The voice was not from the sky but from loudspeakers attached to the rim of the building. Behind it were two similar but slightly smaller buildings, and the rest of the skyline was void of structure. 

People. Actual human people who were still alive. Not just that but official sounding people with loudspeakers and apparently--

The gun was fired again from the top of the building. It was automated, there was no person there, just a little camera that swiveled with it. This round swung wide past Chao and hit the edge of one of the rafts, which began to hiss and deflate. The people atop it stood in worry, among them the woman I’d hauled back up unconscious. She was breathing. She was fine. 

A military presence. Apparently these people had a certain weapons aspect in operation, besides just official sounding loudspeakers. 

“What should we do,” Caroline repeated. I stood, and began waving my arms. “Hey!!” I yelled, “HEY!! We’re humans!! Please help us!!” The gun went off a third time and Caroline yanked me back down just in time. The third bullet hit a second raft, as though the person behind the camera was just going for large objects. “Hey, STOP!” I yelled, even as Caroline tugged me down, “THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE! BE CAREFUL!”

“I don’t think they see us,” Caroline urged. The raft behind us was completely underwater, and the humans previously on it were swimming from it’s sinking shape towards the grey compound. Below us, the monsters had broken their chains, and were 

circling the building, occasionally ramming their sharp mouths against it, as though trying to crack it open and see what was inside. Behind us, Chao’s crewmen were holding cloth to his bleeding shoulder, and Furorem was shouting in outrage. The Custodi response was swift. Within seconds Furorem was leading an order to shoot down the gun atop the building. 

“Get BACK on your raft,” Furorem’s right hand woman hissed in halting but correct english. It was the first english I’d heard out of her. She shoved one of the swimmers onto our raft and we caught them, me, caroline, and the newcomer tumbling. Caroline rolled so far she fell fully into the water. 

“Get the hell back on your raft,” Mellite’s voice demanded. I turned awkwardly, trying to get up and untangle myself from the other prisoner. He was looking at Caroline and she was nodding, and then he pushed her underwater, and seemed to sweep her away with his tail in one great arching motion. She torpedoed through the dark water towards the building, where the other humans were clambering up the one story expanse, safe from at least the compound’s gunfire being so close to the wall. 

Ladders. There were ladders inset into the concrete.

Gunfire was still being exchanged between the camera gun and the Custodi, as none of them were good enough of a shot to hit a mounted pistol without an owner, and the owner on the other side of the pistol’s camera could obviously only see so much, and would only fire at shapes fully out of the water. Like the fucking rafts. 

“Come here, vermis,” Mellite demanded, motioning roughly to me, “it seems I need to teach you a lesson about obedience.” His tone was horrifyingly cold, and for a split seconded I wondered which of the others he was imitating. His eyes, however, were wide and urgent, and I scrambled forwards towards him. “Come with us,” I begged immediately. Not only could I not leave a human to die, apparently I couldn’t leave a half-human-half-fish-boy to die either. 

He shook his head quickly. “Can’t climb the ladder. Now c’mon, quickly,” he whispered back. The raft I was on popped with an indistinguishable shot, and I jostled backwards for a moment. “No,” I said stubbornly, refusing to let him grab for my forearms. 

“I’ll be fine,” he said shortly, “now there are other people I need to help besides just you, so hurry up.” I flushed in embarrassment and scuttled forwards, murmuring a quick, “thank you then, for everything,” as I slid into the water. 

“I didn’t do it for you,” he said. There was no malice in his voice, only tentative but unremorseful fact. 

With a fluid motion he shoved me underwater, and then the flat muscle of his tail was on my lower back propelling me and then it was hard to keep my eyes open as I shot towards the ladder. 

This time I didn’t stop for anybody, I only checked that Caroline was alive and climbing above me, and then I hauled myself up, rung after rung. 

**

“Where did they go?” I asked again. “The other survivors? They’re all in the adjoining rooms, honey, they’re gonna be just fine,” the nurse who was treating the scrapes on the bottoms of me feet replied. Me and caroline were seated on a thin bed, and it was only her weight next to me that allowed me to sit still while this adult placed gauze on cuts I could barely feel. 

“Not them, the Custodi,” I replied with more agitation in my voice than I realized I’d been feeling. It was a startling contrast, the sudden presence of adult authority, and it seemed laughable that even somebody as well pressed and confident as this nurse should be reminding me that everything was going to be okay when she was the one working in an underwater doomsday compound. 

“The what, sweetie?” 

“The mermaids,” I pressed. She looked at me for a long moment, before saying. “How much have you had to drink over the past few days. “Not enough,” I shot back, “now listen, are they dead? Are they…. All dead? Or did some get away? This is important.” 

She hummed, as though about to validate my concerns, and then said, “honey, I’m going to get you and your sister some water. And some pain killers.”

“Nothing hurts,” I shot back. It was Caroline’s hand on my side that stopped me. “I know not all the humans made it in,” Caroline said quietly, “the fire from Furorem’s men was on their backs, and they couldn’t see it coming.” I nodded without speaking. “I think some of Chao’s men went down. Furorem’s crazy-haired confidant disappeared. Chao is definitely dead. He was shot again.”

“What about Mellite?” I asked. She shook her head. “I saw all this while the two of you were talking, I don’t know what happened to him after you came over.”

“Chao’s men were yelling nothingness,” she continued, “as they were shooting, but when one of them got shot he said--” I waited patiently for a moment, before prompting her. “It’s in Latin,” Caroline continued hotly, “I don’t remember exactly. Um…. rapere de caelo?”

“Tear them from the sky,” I translated. “More angel stuff?” she pressed. 

“Angel stuff?” A thickly accented southern voice inquired. A man who must’ve been well into his fifties if not older pulled back the cloth door, and let himself in without a beat of hesitation. “My apologies,” he continued, notably unapologetically, “I don’t mean to intrude. I’ve been coming around to speak with all the survivors personally. My name is James Rochester.”

I said nothing, but nodded. Perhaps me and Caroline were a colder response than he’d been getting in the other rooms, because he laughed in a forced good-natured manner, and said quickly, “aren’t you two young girls glad we have this here compound to stay nice and dry and safe in? What would you have done without us?” 

“We’re very grateful,” I said quickly, “but I need to know what’s happened out there. Did Furorem escape? Did any of the others? Did you take any of them in injured? Is--”

“Did I take any of who in injured?” The old man-- Rochester-- asked in a bemused voice. 

“The MERMAIDS!” I yelled in exasperation. Surely, mermaids were pretty goddamn hard to miss. Why was everybody here talking to me like I was crazy?

“Ah, yes,” he replied, and just from those two overtly patronizing words, I hated him, “you gave a name or two to the nurse? Would you mind terribly giving said names to me?” I debated responding with what are you gonna give me? but I figured at the time that him asking for information--names-- meant he believed me. 

“Furorem. He’s the one with the big scar. Thick bandolier. Broken nose, white hair, and the big rifle slung up around his waist,” I replied. Rochester nodded at me, so I continued. “Chao is the big one, muscles, darker features but same light skin. No bandoliers. I don’t know the name of Furorem’s confidant but she has long white hair and much more pronounced teeth. She’s dangerous-- she….” I trailed off. They were all dangerous. 

“Do you know any of the people I’m talking about?” I asked. Something stopped me from mentioning Mellite. “I’d hardly call them people,” Rochester replied coldly. Him and I seemed to realize his admittance of belief in the same moment, because suddenly his demeanor changed from covertly dangerous to overtly so. Any trace of happy old guy in a commercial for community whatever fell away instantly. 

“Now I need you girls to listen to me closely. This compound is the only one for miles and miles and miles of dangerous water. I’m sure you know that. But fortunately I own it, and I will of course allow you to stay here. But I’m going to need you to follow some simple rules. The last thing I want is widespread panic about the possibility of something as outlandish as mermaids--”

“Possibility!” I interjected in disbelief. 

“--and so I’m going to need you to keep all hush hush about this matter, at least for a little while. All the other folks here with you who are also brave survivors have agreed. Just let the adults handle this, and you two focus on settling in.”

Caroline had gone completely rigid and was trembling with anger, but said nothing. 

“Of course,” I replied, straining to be nearly as fake as he was being. “Thank you so much for your understanding,” he said, but it was a throwaway line, as he was already standing and moving on. “I’ll get one of the nurses here to show you to a bedroom you can use.” 

I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything further. 

“A POSSIBILITY!? LET THE ADULTS HANDLE IT?!” Caroline burst out the minute the both of us simultaneously decided he was out of earshot. “FUCK YOU CRUSTY PRINGLES MAN--” she continued. “Language,” I interjected at a mental distance, unable to pull myself away from the freight train of thoughts and worries I had to file through. “--THE VERY FIRST THING I’M GOING TO GO DO IS TELL EVERYBODY HERE ALL ABOUT EVERYTHING WE’VE SEEN!! HE CAN’T--”

“Easy,” I said sharply, struggling to come back to myself, “we need to stay here. We need to stay alive.”

“THAT’S RICH COMING FROM THE GIRL TRYING TO FIGHT THE NURSE WHO WAS JUST TRYING TO PATCH HER WOUNDS. I--”

“We need to stay alive, we need to find out everything we can if we want to help Mellite, because I have the feeling everything we need to know about what has happened is somewhere here,” I said quietly, forcing her to drop her volume to hear, “and more importantly we need to find out all we can so…. So we can figure out if Eli is here. And if he’s not, then where he might be.”

She deflated. “Okay.”

**

“He’s not here, Hanna,” she said softly. 

His name wasn’t on the list. No Eli’s. No Andersons of any kind. Not my father or mother’s names. Not even any of the names of Eli’s favourite superheros. We checked for those too. In case he gave a fake name. In case, in case, in case....

I shook off Caroline’s hand. I should be the one comforting her, not the other way around. “We don’t know that-- maybe--”

“There’s only a couple hundred people here, and Rochester has them all VERY carefully kept track of. Look, we’re already on the list. He’s not here, Hanna.”

“He’s not dead,” I replied, finally taking her hand, “he’s not.”

“So many other people died,” she stated, and it was completely void of emotion, only a fact, “why shouldn’t we lose somebody when everybody else has.”

“Because I’m supposed to take care of you two,” I whispered, my voice finally breaking, “both of you.” 

“You’ve taken care of me,” Caroline finally burst out, “and besides, I was supposed to take care of him too.... I…. I should’ve tried harder to get to him when everything was happening.” She sucked in a shuddering breath “I-- I was in the car with him when it happened, Hanna.” Shudder. “I couldn’t get his seatbelt undone.” Shudder. “I didn’t bring him out of the car with me.” Her next words were muffled through the fabric of my shirt and the final breaking of a sob. “He’s dead…. He’s dead. It’s my fault.”

“....no,” I said softly, but it wasn’t for Eli, I couldn’t fathom him being gone. It didn’t make any sense. My anguish was for Caroline. “No, no, it’s not your fault.” Finally she let me hug her, and she shook softly in my arms with silent tears. “You’ve known all along, haven’t you?” I asked quietly, “that he wasn’t going to be here?” 

“I’m sorry,” she replied. 

“It’s okay.”


	12. What You Can Do For SeaTo

Darcy: 

Miraculously, I realized, if I could feel the dirt in my mouth, and had to spit it out to be able to breath again, I must be alive. I was too numb to feel for injury, but…. I felt whole. If I was broken, at least it wasn’t clean in half. The light was soft, like sunlight, not anything artificial, and I was above ground for sure. 

A girl’s voice, young and musical, demanded that I get up. So I did, I sat and wiped my dry, dirty tongue onto the sleeve of my hoodie, and slowly regarded a girl of no more than twelve, with long cornsilk blonde hair and dark eyes. She was a collection of soft lines in an off-white sundress. Her skin was too uniform to be believable, as if she was wearing foundation from head to toe, or had been photoshopped into singularity with a distinct absence of blemishes as I watched her move and speak. And wings-- how did I miss them? Even as they flitted about my conscious view. Huge, oilspill black wings. Biblical wings. They were beautiful. They inspired an instant reverence and respect.

As I watched dumbly she brushed invisible dirt from her skirt with a faint look of disdain, and sat elegantly beside me. 

Her fingernails were claws, they must’ve been what I’d felt on my shoulder and back. “Hello,” she said pleasantly, and the greeting was oddly formal, like a “goodday” or a “fine morning, miss”. 

We were sitting in a field of grass and daisies, on a slight hill, ringed in a tree line that made it a secluded meadow. Real grass, real flowers, real soft sunlight, real earth-- that much was obvious as I seemed to have intaken half the mud of the meadow onto my nose and mouth upon landing. 

Meanwhile the girl waiting on me to speak had not a speck of dirt on her. I sat up slowly, reaching for my knife mostly out of habit. I didn’t need it. What bad could possibly happen in such a beautiful and peaceful place?

I tried to reign my brain in enough to reply, my lines of thought slippery. 

“You may address me as Amastasos, Darcy Adara,” she prompted. Amastasos, Almighty. 

“Is this--?” I tried to form a full sentence in my sunny haze. “Are we on earth?”

She shook her head and floated forwards to catch my hands up in her own. Warm, soft, kid hands, apart from the claws for fingernails. This could not be the Almighty power Jaoel had been so terrified of. 

“Unfortunately we are not on earth, Darcy,” she replied, sweetly apologetic, “I have pulled you away and into another pocket of heaven. My prison, Jaoel would call it. But it’s so beautiful, and I can come and go as I please, so I would never refer to it as a prison. Would you?” 

I shook my head at the ridiculous idea. 

“Now listen to me closely,” she continued, “for we haven’t got much time. There is much that needs to be done.” I had a vague sarcastic thought that she was about to whip out some line about me being the “chosen one”, and that thought— the incredulity of the situation— brought me back to myself. The warning bells were now clamoring in my head, but I couldn’t move, frozen to intake whatever she was about to say next. 

“You are going to need to be quiet,” she continued, “secretive, and-- I beg you to someday forgive me for asking this burden of you but-- you can tell no one, especially Jaoel. You can trust his help--”

“I can’t trust anybody,” I interjected. I’d intended for it to come out harsh and cutting, but it came out soft and vaguely whiny. She nodded seriously. “Darcy, I need you to take Acacia and Hanna and meet me in the gardens, okay?” I frowned, and said, “I don’t know any Hannas or any gardens.”

“That’s okay, soon you will. Twelve o’clock. Midnight. Don’t be late.”

And with that Jaoel was there, and I was surprised to realize I could recognize the feeling of his arms around me. It was suddenly very cold. There was metal under my feet and I was slumping forwards into Jay. 

“Darcy?” “Darcy?!” “Darcy!?!” Jordan and Daisy and Disney were all talking over one another. “Darcy?” Jay asked quietly in my right ear, “you okay? You with us? You blacked out for a minute.” 

“I’m okay,” I insisted immediately, “I’m fine.” There was an audible sigh of relief. There was another voice speaking, one I didn’t recognize, so I almost didn’t register it. Until it was speaking directly to me. 

A well-groomed, middle-aged man in a grey jumpsuit with stains on his knees and a stitch through one of his eyebrows was trying to catch my eye and check me for a concussion. His voice was deep, and paternal, and he was looking at me expectantly. 

“What was that?” I asked. “I said I’m Dr. Peirce. I’ve been told by the others that no decisions are to be made without your presence, Ms. Adara,” he repeated, for what may have been the third or fourth time, “now that you’re here, shall we go?” I looked at him, his orderly uniform and the healing skin under his stitch, and nodded. 

“Stick close,” he said over his shoulder, departing at a brisk pace. We followed after him at an equally brisk pace, Jay wheeling the desk of books. We were in a concrete hallway, with uncovered pipes zigzagging the roof. Humans, arrestingly adult, and arrestingly regulated had built this place and were living in it, that much was clear. Rose was softly crying, I think mostly out of relief. 

The man in the jumpsuit hadn’t batted an eye at Jaoel’s wings. “Can he see your--?” “No,” Jay responded quietly, “I’m hiding them.” “Okay,” I nodded back. It wasn’t my place to ask Jaoel how he chose to hide or not hide the huge appendages. “He didn’t seem too concerned when we appeared out of thin air,” Jay whispered, as we continued on, “so I’m guessing the people here have seen almost as much as you have. I’ll keep them hidden for now though. The priority is you and the others, and I don’t know what preconceptions he’ll have about me.”

Another worker in the same grey jumpsuit met us at the first intersection of hallways, and smiled. She had nice, crinkly eyes, but a hard set smile, as though her smiles now were different than her smiles before. When she saw Acacia, she stooped to hug her. Part of me very much wished I was little so I could be swept up in a hug like that. Everybody needed a hug, I could see it on their faces. I turned to Disney and wrapped my arms around his middle. He hugged me back forcefully, and immediately. It didn’t feel very us but it felt reassuring. 

The woman led us to an adjoining room with shelves of jumpsuits, where we left the desk of books and changed without question, throwing our filthy clothes into the giant wash bin. All except Crashtest, who stubbornly pulled his hoodie on over his new suit. The suits were big enough that even I had to roll up my sleeves to make mine fit, so needless to say Acacia and Crashtest were swimming in theirs, and the twins looked comically thin in theirs, with great fabric wings of extra material in their sleeves. 

The woman handed Jay one and he accepted it politely. “Not really your…. Uh…. Style? Is it Jay?” I prompted meaningfully, concerned about the small matter of his invisible wings. He just shrugged and pulled it on, the fabric melding over the wings-- because, magic, duh-- until it had formed a neat seam like it was made for him. I stared for a moment before leaning up to whisper, “neat.” The guy, Mr. Pierce, handed us each a bracelet, like we were hospital inmates. Or mental hospital inmates. They clicked on, but had to be cut off. They each had a barcode and a series of numbers on them. He recorded on a clipboard who had taken what number, and asked for our legal names. I clicked my bracelet with an ominous finality, and shuddered. We couldn’t get too comfy, we still had to be smart. 

“Darcy. Darcy Smith,” I told him, when he asked for my name. I was playing a dangerous game. If my dad was here, I wanted to find him as soon as possible. But I also wasn’t that quick to trust, even if it was another human. He was a grown man I didn’t know who stood like he had a background with the army, and he had closed off looking eyes. I hadn’t forgotten that not all humans are humans out for the greater good. 

“Rose Desmond,” Rose said quickly, making the decision for her and Daisy, since they looked identical, “please, do you know if my mom is here? Her legal name is Laura Desmond, but she goes by Crystal Destiny.” The man shook his head, and continued collecting names. 

“Mr. God will want to see you, Ms. Smith,” the woman said. She had a thick accent, and a matter-of-fact voice. “Don’t call him that,” Mr. Pierce replied, but it seemed like an automatic response, said a million times already. 

“I’ve had enough gods for one day,” I mumbled under my breath. Jay looked at me for a moment before his eyes widened, and he opened his mouth. Then he abruptly closed it again, thinking better of the notion, but continued to quietly watch me with concerned understanding. 

Mr. Pierce let out a sigh, apparently not giving a damn. Perhaps he’d heard odder things already that day. “These wristbands are your numbers,” he said, “they coordinate with your sleeping bays. Don’t take them off. This is a privately owned bunker, children, and before the ocean covered us it accepted only employees, their families, and those specifically selected. An ark if you will. And I frankly have no idea how you managed to get here, but you’re not the first, we luckily have the protocol all set up to take you in.”

The woman interrupted whatever he was going to say next with a warning, still holding Acacia’s hand. “Since you showed up in a flash of light, my suggestion is to not share the details of your arrival with anyone. We don’t really seem to take well to angelic mysteries here, or mysteries of any kind for that matter. Better to call it a miracle, for everybody’s sake.” 

We nodded, but collectively wondered how far the lie “I dunno, guess it was a miracle” would hold out. The man regarded her, but in the end said nothing but, “come on, children. I’ll show you to your sleeping bays.”

**

It was wonderful seeing other people. Even Crashtest and I were emotional once we could fully see the grand plaza, not just hear the people’s voices. PEOPLE, real people, milling around, standing in line for hot food. It was all very gray, very metal and concrete, and very military, signs clear and decisive, but to us it looked so inviting. 

“Upstairs is the gardens, where we grow our own food, and generate oxygen. Above even that is the filter for seawater, so we can use it within the compound as drinking water,” the woman explained, “that’s how Mr. God made his first million, affordable salt-water filteration, helping with the water crisis.”

GARDENS. 

“.... You are absolutely not to go up there without a pass,” she continued. Of course. People stared as we skirted the table after the two workers. What, had they never seen 8 bedragled kids and a toned guy with hair to his shoulders materialize out of the ocean before? 

“Are we still underwater?” I asked. Mr. Pierce nodded curtly. “Waterproof bunker, kiddo.” It suddenly felt a lot colder. They led us to a big, metal service elevator, and we stared wistfully back at the crowd. 

“I haven’t seen mom,” Rose whispered to Daisy, “but there’s so many faces here.” They held hands at the back of the elevator. “I don’t suppose you know her pin number,” Mr. Pierce joked lightheartedly. Rose shook her head. The elevator started to descend.

“Now, kids,” Mr. Pierce began, “very important news, so listening ears please….” I physically contained my sarcastic response. I wanted adults. Just…. not this one. “.... Floors six and below are strictly off limits to civilians. There are very serious consequences for anyone who goes down there, even by accident. Choose your elevator buttons carefully, please.”

I idly wondered when would be my first chance to checkout the “forbidden floors” because obviously they held further clues about what was going on. He ushered us out of the elevator the minute the doors dinged pleasantly open. “You’re not the only new arrivals,” he informed us, “Hanna and her sister Caroline arrived just yesterday, through the top doors Mr. R had intended for use as a through-way to the outside. 

Hanna.

I wasn’t even surprised by the coincidence, or how quickly

it had arrived. “Hello, Hanna, Caroline, I’m Darcy,” I greeted, exaggerating my name. I expected them to go wide eyed with the realization that they’d also had a vision where a bitchy 10 year old angel told them to find some kids named Darcy and Acacia and take them to the gardens to fulfill THE PROPHECY— but no. No recognition. I just ended up looking like an idiot. 

My kids, behind me, smiled and waved first. There were a few tentative: “Hi, Hanna” and “Hi, Caroline”s. Rose broke ranks first. It’s so hard to explain but…. Other humans. Other humans our age, who’d just gone through the same things as us. Rose ran to hug Hanna. Disney ran and hugged her sister. Acacia hugged the woman guiding us with Mr. Pierce again. 

There was laughter and tears, but I was thinking. Mr. Pierce took us down the hallway with our rooms. And when I say rooms I mean “sleeping bays”, these weird 6 foot tall but only six feet wide and six feet deep cubes with a twin sized mattress and white bedding stuffed into them on the floor. I was reminded of the depth at which coffins are set into the earth when I first saw them, and could never properly view them again without that thought. The size was far too small for people who were already claustrophobic with the knowledge that they were trapped under a gazillion tons of water. 

I didn’t want to go in the one Mr. Pierce assigned to me, but I did. I made a joke about it being spacious and pretended to stretch out like I was reclining on a beach chair. 

They each had a black porthole window, and at first I thought it was an oddly framed black piece of paper. I did a double take when I realized it was outside and-- just like at our school-- outside looked like nothing. What use was that? A bit of a design flaw, if you ask me, paying for windows when they’re just as blank as the grey walls. 

Mr. Pierce left us to our own devices with an instruction-- more of a warning really-- to behave. Several begging glaces turned to me. “Let’s go back up to the lunch hall then,” I answered, then tacked on, “actually, you guys go. Eat some food, figure out how the number/name thing works, just…. Just in case….” the unspoken addition was the ‘just in case our families are here’, “and you can leave your bags here,” I finished. 

Not a single bag was put into a single sleeping bay, and the automatic doors were far too suspicious, looking like they could close without any warning. The bags were instead dumped in a pile in the hallway, at my feet. Disney was the last to set down a bag, and for the first time in our lives together-- our quirky mess of a friendship with me continuously plaguing him with the next “apocalyptic possibility” coming to get us in our sleep, or details of my love life with Ace, a quirky mess of a friendship with him continuously looking nervous or hurt-- I felt a strong sense of empathy for him. With him. Whatever. 

He felt scared and hurt and out of his depth and now so did I. How did he deal with it? I wanted to sit down and talk with him. He was my friend, used to be my best friend for many years. But I needed to clear my head first. And I needed to decide whether or not to tell Jay the truth about Almighty’s message. 

I walked over and slowly hugged him. Not because that was how I usually expressed empathy but because I knew that was how he usually expressed empathy. He was (not so) secretly a big fan of best friend hugs. “I’ll come up in a bit, but look for my dad’s name, will you? Just in case.”

“Yeah,” he responded, voice rough, “of course.” He shot a quick and useless distrustful glance at Jaoel, and then headed for the elevator with the others. 

The second the doors clicked shut, and me and Jay were alone in the hall, the words “what did Almighty want from you?” were flying out of his mouth in a flash of dizzying lavender. I glared at him. Sure, the mind-control didn’t affect me but…. “your weird angel smell is giving me a headache,” I replied. He seemed then to realize how aggressively he was talking, standing, and projecting. 

“Sorry, Darcy. Sorry.” He took a step back. I took a steading breath. “Look, it’s been kinda insane I just need a minute to rest, and s--” Some alone time, that’s how I was going to finish that sentence. All of ours were upstairs, Hanna and her little sister were in a sleeping bay, talking quietly across the way, there was another woman reading in her bay, but it was quiet now. I didn’t trust the bays enough to get in mine without anyone to help me if the automatic door closed, but I fully intended to sit down with my back to the hallway wall and try to breath for a moment. 

“Can I speak with you for a moment?” he asked tensely, “privately?” Now I was pissed. “Sure,” I said lightly, but the clear undertone was, “no, you can’t. Fuck you.” He didn’t seem too concerned with undertones, as he glanced around at the two surveillance cameras before backing me up into my sleeping bay. 

It was suddenly very hot, very cramped, and very lavender scented with me and a six foot tall glowy, fiery angel in a six by six by six inclosed cube. He had to duck significantly to fit his wings in above his head, and that further brought us uncomfortably close. He closed the door behind him. 

“Stop that,” I snapped, and the lavender scent dissipated with a guilty look, as did the faux-calm it brought. “Sorry,” he murmured as my head cleared, “force of habit.”

We stared at each other for a moment. 

“You saw Almighty?” It wasn’t really a question, but a statement. He waited for me to elaborate. There was nowhere to back away into. I didn’t feel threatened, but slightly claustrophobic, like my heart and lungs were resting atop one another in a cramped tower. His wings brushed the ceiling, walls, and floor, and my back was pressed into the cold metal porthole window frame. We were both standing with dirty shoes on the clean mattress. 

“Yeah,” I said roughly, “I had the bitch at arms length away. I was all mind-control-y though, or I coulda--” I trailed off. He stared at me incredulously. “Or you could have killed your God?” He demanded. 

“I thought you said she wasn’t God!” I shot back. “No! She’s not! She’s so much worse, she’s Almighty!” 

There was a breath of silence in the wake of his shouting. 

“I thought you couldn’t say her name,” I accused quietly. “I can’t reveal any information to you, or to anyone with human blood. That was a direct order. But now that you know, I can speak of what I know you know,” he explained. “Oh.” I felt small, pressing myself into the back wall. 

“Darcy, these are the…. Relatively good guys. Almighty, she’s dangerous, but she…. Ack.” I waited for a moment as he coughed, a small spray of blood decorating the already dirty sheets. 

“There are no good guys,” I said, when he’d quieted, “there’s humans, and there’s angels.” A look of hurt colored his features for a moment, as I separated us and them, and divided the two of us into two different categories. “I--” Whatever he meant to say next also went against the Bond, because there was much coughing and balling of fists before he managed to get out, “I’d never hurt you. Never.” 

It was nice, and above that surprising, that he’d fight the Bond to express a sentiment. “Even if Rogziel told you to?” I asked, unable to stop myself. 

His features hardened, and he took a step away from me, cramming his wings behind him, as though he thought I was intimidated. Maybe my body language was displaying fear. “No?” He said, but it was more of a question than a statement, and I shivered. 

Instead of lying to make it better, he looked at me and insisted again, “what did Almighty want from you? Darcy, you can’t trust her.” Of course I couldn’t trust her, I couldn’t trust anybody. That entire sentence seemed to be a desperate filler for whatever he really wanted to say. “That’s funny,” I replied, “because she was quick to assure me that I should trust you.”

Finally, finally, he said what he meant. “Almighty always has a plan. She cares about the biggest picture, and right now that’s proving humanity’s worth, which is excellent news for us. But she also doesn’t care about individual human lives. She will use you as a pawn if you let her.”

“Why me,” I demanded, unable to feel remorseful for acting a little like a petulant toddler, “why not any of the others? Does she think I’m gullible, and that I’ll be easy to use.” He shook his head, “Darcy, your name has held meaning, held standing in heaven, long before your birth--”

I cut him off. “Shut it, I don’t want any more chosen one crap,” I said sharply, “you think you can win me over by telling me I’m special? That I survived for a reason? I am in change because I am capable, not because of any mystical prophecy.”

For a moment he was speechless. “But--” 

“NO!” I insisted. He sighed, and continued, “very well, Darcy. There’s nothing words can do to prove their own verity. Time will tell your place. I wish only to explain to you that Almighty knew who she was going for before she picked you up, and it’s not because she thinks you’re gullible.” 

I sighed as well, and then said truthfully, “I don’t know what she wants from me.” He gave me his best lavender-mind-control voice, minus the actual scent, and said, “don’t do anything she tells you to.” 

“Approach with caution?” I amended. 

“Leave her to her own suicidal plans, despite how her goals coincide with ours,” he argued. 

“Only do what she suggests if it seems like a good idea!” I summarised, daring him to argue further.


	13. Jessica

May 23, 2021- 3 days After,

We didn’t escape to the mainland. The people who escaped to the mainland are dead. 

We went to the Florida State TexCorp Filtration Facility, “SeaTo”, or “the Bubble“, me and my father. He still won’t talk to me except for the occasional: “how are you”, “are you hungry” and “are you okay?”. 

Well, I’m just fine and dandy, and the food is distributed on a strict twice daily system corresponding to our assigned personnel numbers. I have absolutely no answer to the last question. 

My father, in all his TexCorp uniform and TexCorp clipboard and TexCorp glasses glory, insists that there could be a refugee assistance program on the mainland. The other workers all give short laughs and respond (at least to me) with: “not a chance in hell.” 

I don’t have my meds. 

I can feel a shift in myself without anything for anxiety, but I don’t feel any different without the ones for the real crazy stuff. Then again it’s always hard to tell from such a subjective point of view. And now…. Everyone else is stuck in their own versions of crazy, there’s hardly any normal left to measure up against. 

I’m not writing this because I feel the need to document. Rochester and his men with their paper hole punches and neat capital printing do enough. I’m writing this because I don’t want to forget things, from before. 

From MY before. 

Like Nadia, in 2017. 

She was showing me a new part of the beach and she looked very human and very real. From the shoulders up she could’ve almost been a raven-haired, but ghostly pale-skinned girl that went to Keys Junior High with me. Soggy wet thread bracelets and seawater eyelashes and red nose from the late September cold. 

I first met Nadia when I was 7. My family lived in Florida, and I was apparently old enough to go down to the beach by myself. 

And there she was. 

I was normal then. Or at least as close to it as I’ll ever see again. Scraped knees, runny nose normal. I saw her by some twist design of cosmic chance I didn’t then understand. In fact, if somebody had explained to me then that falling in love with a mermaid when, in 9 years, me and everybody else I’d ever known would be facing death by encroaching sea, I would have informed them politely that I was 7 and had no sense of the word “irony”. 

It needs not be said that when I reached middle school and proudly announced that my best friend was a mermaid, it didn’t go over well. I did not like the proposition that she did not exist, and despite the fact that I understand words like “schizophrenia” now, I’ll always find the idea that I came up with such a vivid entire being incredible. 

When I first came home and told my mom I’d met a mermaid on the beach she ruffled my hair and said “that’s nice, sweetie”. I suppose, in retrospect, that created an unfair misconception of acceptance. 

Even after you’ve accepted that you’re crazy, there’s a difference between what you’re told is real and what you can see. Until I was 13, I could SEE Nadia. She wasn’t a confusing vision, she was a person I could talk to, talk with. She had a backstory and dreams and opinions all her own. The evidence of her existence was overwhelming. 

And then she disappeared. 

It wasn’t until a year after she had gone that I stopped asking where she went, and started realizing she had never been there at all. 

Where is Nadia? 

She went with the Hunt because they called. 

What is the Hunt, why do they need her?

And then finally, FINALLY, the apparent falseness of what I’d thought to be truth became evident, and the illusion came crashing down around me. The Hunt? Come on, Jessica. Honestly. I started Seroquel and then she disappeared. 

She was never real. 

This is life After the apocalypse. It seems less real than life after Nadia. I still don’t know why I survived. 

May 24th, 2021- 4 days after

Be completely imaginary or completely real I will never forget her face. 

May 26th, 2021- 6 days after

If this is life now, I need to keep track of what is real and what is not. 

My measuring scale of “normal” will be before the ocean, but after Nadia, as that was “real life”. 

You’re probably wondering: if I’m a crazy girl without her meds, writing about pretty mermaids, why on earth should you believe anything I’m saying? 

Truthfully, you probably shouldn’t believe me. I shouldn’t believe me. But what else is there for me?

There are about 100 of us here. It’s quiet most of the time, not because there’s nothing to talk about, but because nobody wants to talk about the few things pressing on our minds. We mostly stay in our sleeping quarters or the dining hall. The adults who worked here Before, they go off and do secret things. I’m civilian level clearance-- my soul purpose is to stay alive until the After is over. I couldn’t help DO anything if I wanted to. 

I think they know-- the adults, like my dad, who work for Mr. Rochester-- they know how long until the ocean goes back to normal. 

It’s only been 5 days. But it feels like a lifetime because all we have to do around here is sit and wait. 

The best way I can describe SeaTo TexCorp is ”militarized“. It’s a bunker, but above ground, and now below water. It was a secret between about a 100 workers, including my dad. It was built to hold workers and their families, about 400 people. But 300 didn’t make it. We’re 100, but 75% civilians. We don’t even take up half the room. The hallways echo. The Wave came faster than even Rochester could’ve known. 

Mr. James Rochester has always been a well-known man in our state. He didn’t matter much in terms of politics, but he was rich, which eventually equated to the same thing. In his teenage years he invented the first prototype for a saltwater to drinking water filtration facility, Seato, and it worked so well he decided to make another. Solving the water crisis! That was his headline. Making more money off of existing money was his reality but the papers didn’t much care. As he prepared to make a third facility, his company lost millions in investments with no warning. He’d done something, but was very good at covering it up until eventually people stopped guessing and lost interest. The third and “mostly empty” saltwater processing facility was still somewhat of a local mystery; curious enough to have old ladies discuss it over tea, but not curious enough for anybody else to care. My dad refused to comment on the matter all the years he worked for Rochester. 

[The original SeaTo facility draws up sea water at the bottom and heats it to a ridiculous temperature, basically like a volcano, and then filters it down a giant funnel thing and into a reservoir in the centre. My dad used to say that with more funding they could be installed for any big costal city.]

Not exactly eco-friendly in terms of the amount of fossil fuels used to create the heat, but the idea was that it could america independant in the water crisis, and that was all anybody seemed to give a damn about anymore. 

That third dome that was abandoned is now the Bubble. We live in it. Fully equipped for people, animals and plants to survive underwater. Below level 5 is all secret facilities, but levels one to five are capable of sustaining 400+ human lives for upwards of a year. It’s been six days. 

Level one is the Gardens. You need special permission to access them so I’ve never been, but they look extensive. The solar panels on the roof of the structure that sticks out above water power sunlight light bulbs for the plants. Mr. Rochester is truly a genius in regards to our survival I suppose. Some of the kids and younger workers here have taken to calling him Mr. God. I hope it doesn’t stick. 

Level two is the mess hall. Everybody has an ID bracelet with their number and scan code on it, so we get two meals a day. There’s some talk that Mr. R wants to move on to tattoos on people’s forearms, that can be scanned. But what about when all this is over? When the ocean recedes? It seems to me like he’s saved our lives and he intends to keep us in that debt even after The After.

Levels three, four and five are sleeping bays. 

My number is 54397914. I’m worried Mr. God wants to own me. 

May 26th/27th/ The middle of the night/morning: 6.5 days after

There was a man. He might live after this, or he might die. He went down to the forbidden levels and he was hauled back up in the elevator by my father and a woman who kept screaming “James! James! Oh, God, please, James!” Mr. God didn’t hear her, or if he did, he stayed in bed. 

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head when they set him down. I didn’t think that happened outside of the movies. 

No matter how hard I try I cannot draw him. His face and neck…. They were covered in burns. His shirtfront was slick with what looked like golden paint mixing with his own blood. It didn’t seem like he’d been attacked by a human or an animal, but the burns were encircling his neck, he hadn’t fallen on a machine. Whatever he’d encountered seemed to be something in between. 

I can’t fall asleep again tonight, I keep seeing his face and picturing some ridiculous faceless cyborg monster, with flame hands, aimlessly shuffling around on floor six, but always tensing at any slight scent of blood. 

May 27th, 2021-- Day 7

The man is dead. 

There were four sombre flowers from the gardens upstairs, and a closed casket funeral. The woman from last night, who called on God, is nowhere to be seen. After they took his body in the casket back down the elevator, but they made no statement as to what they were going to do with it. 

My father looked at me very seriously, but all he said was, “don’t go down past level five.” 

I’m civilian-clearance. I don’t think the elevator would let me down that far. 

Not that I’d ever want to. 

Still May 27th, 2021-- Day 7

I’m sorry to say this will be the last journal entry, as I have yet again lost my mind. 

I saw Nadia. In the window. The window that has been a small painting of complete black the entire time I’ve been in this sleeping bay. 

There was noise from outside, distant clanking, and then the deep resounding groan of what could only be an earthquake. But it only came from one side of the compound. Again and again, like a giant hammering on the wall of our little bubble. There was a flash of what looked like scales, and I missed the first shape to peer in my window, but the movement grabbed my attention. 

The second shape to move by was also glinting in the faint light of my window like the shiny reflection of scales, but this shape formed itself into black hair and a scared smudge of blueish white face. She turned and it was undoubtedly her, the same eyes, the same questioning eyebrows, her hair and scales blacker than the black water, but older, and with a new scar on her shoulder. She blinked back the light from the window, turned, and flicked her tail, disappearing beyond what I could see from my window. 

Why tonight? Why now? I don’t know. It’s been seven days since I last had my medication. But her face. Was the same. 

Now I could elect to continue labelling myself as borderline crazy, dismiss this incident, and continue writing. But I don’t want to. I’m choosing this proof over sanity. The After type of sanity is not a type I want anyway. 

And since I am no longer filling this record with facts even I fully believe, what good is it going to be at reminding me what is real? So this is it.

May 28th, 2021-- Day 8

Alright, I’m back. Insanity is not a lightswitch. It’s more of a sliding scale, I think. I can be quite insane about some things, and quite sane about others. But you see, the increments of this scale are not entirely even, as I’ve discovered, so it’s safe to say I could allow myself to be a small amount more insane, without straying too far from the median. 

Here’s a visual: 

-10 -2 True Neutral 2 10

I figured I was already at true neutral, which is apparently my constant, inescapable state. So accepting two increments up from that wouldn’t be too far of a stretch. As long as I stay well out of plus ten territory, everything will be fine. 

Still May 28th, 2021-- 8 days after

It happened at dinner. Benji, this little boy, son of one of the workers here, leaned over to his dad and mine and whispered, “guess what, I saw a mermaid in the window.”

I almost choked on our watery chicken noodle soup. 

Somebody laughed and reprimanded me for my poor table manners. Me. When such a thing had just be said. My dad gave me a short look, the “oh-for-the-love-of-god-Jessica-stop-that” look. 

Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry, and excused myself to my room, earning several disappointed frowns. The leftover food was my ration, and it would be saved in the fridges for me, given that we were all eating just enough to stay alive. I coughed again, still about to choke, and walked swiftly out.

May 29th, 2021-- 9 days after

I fell asleep watching the window. What else is there to do? In the morning I woke before the alarm in my sleeping bay sounded and dressed quickly in the jumpsuit scrunched up in the corner. I wanted to keep my blanket wrapped around me, but settled for slipping on my socks and shoes, not wanting the cold concrete on my bare feet. 

I set out for Benji’s sleeping bay. It’s not exactly hard to find people in here. We all have the codes, and all the codes and names are posted in a masterlist on level two. The sleeping bays are in numerical order. 

Benji answered the door promptly, already dressed, awake and playing with his little bucket of toys. The kids here got toys, the adults guns and badges, and I got nothing. How unfair. “What?” He said in his boyish voice. I took a deep breath, I hate children. 

“Glad I caught you,” I said, lowering myself to a sitting position without invitation. 

“....You said you saw a mermaid. Can you tell me what she looked like?” He frowned at me. “Why do you care? Did your dad send you to try and figure out if I’m crazy? ’Cuz you can tell him I’m not.” He raised his little chin defiantly. 

“No, he doesn’t like crazy people, but he gives a pass on crazy kids,” I replied truthfully, “I need to know because I saw her too.” Whether or not he believed me, I couldn’t say.

“I drew a picture,” he supplied helpfully. I received the proffered piece of paper, a sheet of black crayon ocean, with a white crayon stick-man-mermaid in the center. “Was she bald?” I asked, a legitimate question.

He looked offended. “No! It’s just that…. Her hair, it blended in with the water. Like camouflage.”

My heart beat perceptively faster. “Was she carrying anything? Was she wearing cuffs, or rope? Did she have a weapon? Was she wearing anything? Those straps with the metal clips maybe? Was she hurt? Was she bleeding? Did you see any blood? Did—“

“I don’t know!” He burst out. “I don’t know. I didn’t see any blood. But I don’t know.”

It’s after breakfast now. And I have a plan. A crazy, stupid plan.

But what else is there to do around here besides lose your mind?

I’m going down to level six. I’m going to snatch my dad’s security pass off him at dinner. What do I have to lose? He can’t exactly ground me any more than I’m already grounded. I can’t go to my sleeping bay after dinner, because once I enter it, it will alert Mr. God’s system that I’m in for the night. And then it will alert the system once I leave again.

My brilliant plan for that aspect is to hide in the bathrooms, and not come out until the halls are clear. There’s nothing suspicious about going to the bathroom, and it’s not like anybody will keep track of the bathroom comings and goings. 

When the halls are silent, it’s a twenty second sprint from the bathrooms to the elevator.


	14. Romaniel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again: tag for mild non-con in this particular chapter friendos mwah love u all

Romaniel:

I’ve given them all nicknames. Because nicknames are so much easier to remember than the conglomerate mess that is the English language. 

There’s Fangs, she’s scared and scary and aggressive, like a cornered animal, and they seem to follow her. Her aura is primary school crayon red. 

I have to wait, in the gardens, for her and God Girl (the insistent one who definitely knows too much, with her narrowed eyes and her 10 day old mascara) and The Small One (the shortest, and presumably therefore youngest). Humans are so difficult to age as fledglings, there’s no feather growth to measure. 

Despite my disgust as they arrive I say, “fiiiinally, I’m soooo glad you made it.”

Darcy stands in front of them, her arms crossed, and her feet shoulder width apart, as though I, a hundred year old angel, was going to attack them via a punch. Ah yes, I forgot to mention, Fangs is INCREDIBLY STUPID. Alas, I couldn’t find it within myself to be offended. 

“If you wanted to protect them, you wouldn’t have brought them to me, Vlakas.” I only call her an idiot in Enochian, but she seems to take it for worse because she spits some human curses at me. 

Oh yes, I know the warm feeling that pools in your lungs and brushes up your cheeks as English curses leave your tongue. It’s good for her to release some of the pressure. They’re so sharp. So undeniably bad. So dirty. Very me. But that’s about all English is good for. 

I roll my shoulders and say lazily, “come on then, Fangs, let’s go see a bitchy god about a plan to save to world. If--” I pause “--you’re all willing. ’Cause you gotta be willing for the sacrifice to work.” She doesn’t respond, just glares at me coolly, so I prompt, “are you willing?” 

“Yes, I’m willing. But only if you tell me what’s going on.” I shrug, going with at least a small part of the truth, “Almighty wants to get humanity a seat on the angelic council. Yay, how nice for you. C’mon, Fangs.” She looks unimpressed. “Aren’t you Bonded?” She asks, “into secrecy?” 

English sounds especially harsh on her. 

“No. I told you, Fangs, I’m not all committed like Jaoel. I can do whatever I want.” I idly wonder if she’s going to see through what was just perhaps the biggest lie ever told. 

“Now, God Girl and Small One,” I begin, “do you go willingly?” They chorus “yes” before Fangs can object. 

Almighty:

People are stories. Stories are strange. There were once two souls, who loved the human Darcy. Not both romantic love, for there are other kinds of love besides just that of romance. One of them was just starting to escape her orbit, the other was just starting to feel her gravity, and desperately grasping at his surroundings for a handhold to save himself. Their story was tragic, and beautiful.

And this is how we find them: Jaoel running up to Disney and shouting at him, “where is she?!” Disney’s hate for the angel is well-masked, as he is well-versed in the art of masking hate. “Last I saw her, she was with you. And when did you and I start talking about Darcy? We’re not going to have a bonding moment just because we both care about Adara, are we? She’s probably off saving the world. As much as I would love to be in on the plan, alas, I am not.” He nodded as roughly as he could manage up the hallway to the dining hall, where servers handed out hot rations. “Have a taco dude, you’ll feel better about her lack of communication skills.”

Jaoel slammed a hand on the table, and Disney abruptly found his place. “You don’t understand! She’s in danger! Almighty took her and Acacia and Hanna.” Now Disney was on his feet. “Took them where?! For what?!” Jaoel sprinted down the hallway and too the grey elevator doors, Disney huffing along beside him to keep up. 

“....3 of them,” Jaoel was saying, “she wants a council seat.” “I’m sorry, a what? A seat where now?” 

“The High Council. Angels.” Jaoel jammed his finger into the elevator button over and over again. A small amount of blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, the Bond snapping and contorting like a rubber band, taunt around his chest and lungs. Disney gasped, holding onto the cold wall, lungs tightening as well, but from asthma, a different kind of inwards pressure. “She wants a human representative on the council,” Jaoel completed, accompanied by coughing, the Bond snaking out from his open mouth to stay tight around his words. “That’s good--” Disney was barely able to finish, hunched over and breathing raggedly. “Isn’t it?” 

The elevator doors dinged open pleasantly, and Jaoel dragged him through them. “No, it’s not good, Joshua. The ceremony requires several magical items, all of which I assume Almighty has acquired, and the LIFE FORCES of a half-human/half-angel, a half-human/half-custodi, and a human champion, somebody truly pure and without sin and-- a child basically.”

“Oh my God.” And with that ironic choice of words, Disney is stumbling back into the metal wall, his spine banging against the handrail, his hands feebly clutching at the fabric of his shirt front. “They’re going to die.” 

“Does Darcy live with both her parents?” Jaoel demanded. Disney shook his head violently, searching his pockets for something. When he couldn’t find it he cursed, then wheezed, “no mom.” Jaoel let loose a slew of cursing first in Hebrew, then Greek, and then a little Latin. “She’s half- angel, that would make sense. Why I feel connected--” He slipped into Herbrew and then back again, “.... might be too late.” 

“Hold on,” Disney demanded breathily. And I think we would do well to remember that he can love violently too. “What do you mean, too late?” 

“If the ceremony has already started then it must be completed,” Jaoel explained slowly, “They’ll need 3 sacrifices.” “Okay. Okay, well, let me go instead. We need Darcy, Humanity needs Darcy. Let me replace her.” Jaoel regarded him, “you’d do that? For her?” Disney nodded violently, then happened across his inhaler in his pocket, and breathed it in shudderingly. 

“Are you serious?” Jaoel asked, and the scent of lavender filled the elevator. “Yes. I would do anything for her. She’s my best friend.” 

The elevator dinged open and the scent-- and the two boys-- tumbled out. Immediately the other humans were there, clamouring at them. 

“I need a knife!” Jaoel said above the crowd. “Or a razor blade! Does anybody have a blade?” Poor, innocent, idiotic Jaoel. Who believes so much in the peace he preaches, he didn’t bring a single weapon to a battle. 

The dark boy, Aedyn, or Crashtest or however he wished to be named, strode forward to the angel, eyes ablaze, and wordlessly unzipped a pencil case to neatly drop two razor blades into Jaoel’s outstretched hand. Poor, innocent, idiotic Jaoel, who looked at the tiny weapons with confusion, before thanking the boy. 

Jaoel turned to Disney, struck his own wrist, and said gently, “I want you to understand that this is a very long shot. But my only plan, weak is it may be, is that we could try to.... trick the system I suppose. Here…. angel blood. Drink.” Gold blood ran clean to his elbow as Disney bowed his head and drank. 

“Who’s stepping in for Acacia?’ Daisy demanded, as Jaoel began to explain the situation. Jaoel looked soberly up at her, until his vision started to blur slightly around the edges. Disney’s teeth grazed his skin. “If the ceremony has already started, that means it’s too late for her.” 

Romaniel:

Almighty was yelling at me. 

I suppose to them it looked comical. Her faux-innocent facade, the little girl in the white dress, all air-brushed and sun-kissed. But I could see her world-encompassing, fiery, true form. In fact it was all I could see, she was growing it, trying to engulf me. 

“Well. I didn’t fucking do it on purpose!” I burst out, taking a step back. I was glad of the English curse when I saw the look of disdain on her face. “You told me to point out to you two halflings and a child! I did!!” Almighty threw a french-manicured finger in Small One’s direction. “Have you really spent so long,” she spat, “longing after a little pathetic bit of humanity, that you can’t recognize a monster, Romaniel?” 

We’d kinda forgotten Fangs was there, I suppose, because she surprised both of us when she shoved Small One at God Girl, marched up to Almighty, and slapped her. 

Right across her stupid, bitchy face. (I may have danced around gleefully. Just a little.) Fangs grabbed her by the hair and said, “alright, that’s IT. I came here for a PEACEFUL talk. Hanna and Acacia are going back downstairs now, and you’re going to tell me exactly what is going on.”

Almighty disappeared. She does that. A lot. It’s the worst. Darcy stumbled forward, but wasted no time whirling on me. Moi. As though I was somehow part of the problem here. “And what do you want from me?” I asked lazily. Did I want to rush back to heaven and have more of the same lovely chat with our fearless leader Almighty? No. Sue me, I had other things to take care of in regards to Adara. The real reason I was in attendance for what would’ve been a well carried out ritual sacrifice. Caelum knows at that point I didn’t care about saving humanity. At least, not about saving the vast majority of humanity that would never be of use to me. 

“Let us go nicely,” she demanded, “and I won’t hurt you.” I laughed. Perhaps it was insensitive, but truly, I couldn’t help it. Her and her little pocket knife. “You’re hilarious,” I finally managed, to her most vicious scowl, “I’ll make you a deal. And I would encourage you to take it because now that Almighty has left you for dead, your chosen one usefulness has run out, dear.”

This was it. I could do this. So what if I didn’t know her. So what if I didn’t like her. So what if Fangs looked ready to stab that pocket knife into my chest cavity and fruitlessly twist. So what if I didn’t feel anything. 

“Your friends can go,” I said at last, “you stay.” 

“Why?” 

“I need your angelic blood.”

“I’m sorry. My what?” 

“Tell them to leave,” I countered. She did. They ran, God Girl dragging Small One behind her. The door opened and closed neatly behinds them with a hiss and a click. 

“I thought Almighty was supposed to be a good guy,” Fangs snapped. “She is a good guy,” I responded with equal venom, “and had you brought along an innocent human child and not one with damon blood, I think even you would’ve been all for her plan. Take three lives, but gain a seat on the High Council, make a splash again, make a statement. Almighty is the only higher up angel who still gives a flying, multicoloured damn enough to waste time and effort on humanity.” 

“Time and effort?!” Fangs spluttered, knife flashing in my face, “she wanted to KILL us! How on Earth could you have possibly thought I’d be “all for” that plan?!” I frowned at her, “I don’t understand your priorities. I thought you were supposed to be a good guy.” 

She stared me down, eyes flashing as dangerously as the knife, “are you going to kill me?” 

Okay. I could do this. 

“No. But I need you to be co-operative.” She didn’t lower her tiny weapon and said, “are you going to tell me what you meant about my blood?” 

I tried to smile. I really did. It came out more as a grimace as I grit out, “I don’t want to spill your blood, Fangs. To clarify, I need it in your veins to help me escape something. A very bad something.”

“I thought you weren’t affected by the Bond.”

“I am not weak and chained like Jaoel, but I am Bonded to our father. I made a deal to help Almighty, and she has in return helped to free me. But she can only do so much.”

“What do you want from me?”

I could do this.

My voice was quiet, and I realized I’d been backing her up into a wall. The knife pressed at my sternum. “You have angel blood. Blood calls to blood. Well…. That’s my hope at least.”

“I don’t understand.” He voice shook. 

I could tell her. I could look at her pathetic face and her pathetic knife and tell her what I wanted. But that would be asking permission. It wasn’t wrong to use force if she…. Hadn’t said no. My throat burned. Even I knew that line of logic was wrong. No, especially I knew that line of logic was wrong. 

It was wrong, it was wrong, it was wrong.

“I’m just…. Looking for a loophole. I need you to stand very still. Put the knife down.” She wouldn’t lower it. 

She gave a small puff of air into my face that half resembled a laugh, and then demanded: “You don’t know what you’re doing. Do you?”, staring me down. 

“No. I don’t,” I admitted, “but rest assured I will figure it out as I go. Now, if you don’t shut up, I’ll have to shut you up myself.” She fell silent. Momentarily. 

“What do you do when you love something?” I asked. A pause from her. “I’m sorry?” she spluttered, incredulously. 

I sighed, realizing I may have been asking the wrong person about love. 

“Close your eyes.”

“No.” 

“Your gaze is distracting to me. Close them.” 

“No.” 

She thought she couldn’t be controlled. Just because her angel blood meant that Jaoel’s lavender wouldn’t work on her. Please. There are other ways to force somebody into doing what you want. 

The sharp scent of mint cut the air and I almost gagged on my own magic. She gasped, and cried out in pain, hitting at my hands, trying to stumble away up the wall. Her knife drove into my chest twice, and I winced, pulled it out, and tucked it quietly into the front pocket of her hoodie. 

I knew how mint burned. I knew too well. 

“I said close your eyes, Fangs,” I hissed. She must’ve attributed the crack in my voice to anger and not a gasping lack of breath, as she snapped her eyes shut. 

Her eyes were closed. I peeled my hands back from her ribcage. 

Oh mint burned everybody. 

“Tell me what you want from me,” she demanded. I said nothing. I tried to study her. I knew what it felt like to look at someone you love. They became the most beautiful person to ever live, every single thing about them became beautiful. I tried to find something beautiful in her face. She had pretty cheekbones, dark eyelashes, chapped but full lips. 

I could do this. If my curse was to be unable to escape my father’s hold because I couldn’t find it within myself to love anybody else, then perhaps I deserved to die an enslaved man. 

I could do this. 

I tried to reach out my aura, tried to feel the tug in the pit of my stomach that I’d heard described so many times with love, that I’d only ever felt as a sickening jolt. I tried to picture it as pleasant, tried to imagine myself being pulled forwards with desire instead of chains. 

I reached out and took her hand, and she snatched it away. 

Nothing. 

I squeezed it. 

Nothing. 

I used my thumb to (somewhat) gently open her eyes and look into them. She trembled, out of anger and fear. Why she stood still I didn’t know. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

I could do this. 

I realized with a start that the scent of mint was overpowering, and that every time I touched her I was burning her. 

Magic doesn’t leave a mark. Nobody can see how badly it scars, not even the user. Not if they don’t want to. 

I pulled my thumbs away and her eyes closed. I tried to will the magic out of my fingertips. 

What do you do when you love somebody?

I could do this. 

I grabbed Fangs, and kissed her, hard and demanding and it tasted like salt. Her tears, not mine. She pushed me away. Caelum, who was this girl?! “Don’t touch me.”

Nothing. There was nothing. 

I put a finger to her sternum. 

Mint. Burn. Gasp. A sob. 

“Don’t move.” A glare from her. More mint. I felt lightheaded. I could feel his hands on me. Rogziel. They were everywhere, they were burning. 

Mint. Burn. Gasp. No sob. 

She didn’t move. I retreated across the room to watch her. She didn’t cry, she glared. 

I leaned sideways against the icy wall for support. I needed to see something in her, that could save me. So I just stood, and stared, and tried with all of my fear to find something beautiful. 

The door crashed open and Darcy Adara’s rescue party fell through. Jaoel was with them. My eyes narrowed, as he yelled something about “Acacia and the other girl” being safe. 

There was more yelling, naturally. Darcy ran to him, and I-- because I am an idiot beyond comparison-- leaped out and tried to follow her. Jaoel grabbed her and there was somebody punching me. 

The world shifted on its axis. The tug was not only in the pit of my stomach but in every one of my cells, burning together to reach out because this…. This was what hope felt like. Hope was punching me in the face. The fact that his name bubbled to my lips, begging to be said, made me half-collapse in relief. There was only one way I could know a human’s name. “Chang- Min,” I breathed. 

Hope stopped punching me. Hope wasn’t very good at punching anyway, his aim was sloppy and his elbows were too low. “Stop reading my mind, you fucking freak,” Hope spat at me, dumping me onto the concrete floor. 

“Crashtest! Leave him, let’s go!” Darcy yelled from somewhere that sounded very far away. Hope was moving away from me now. “Wait! Chang- Min!” My voice was garbled. I absentmindedly spat out a tooth. Hope turned and looked at me with big eyes, as Darcy and Jaoel grabbed him from behind. Jaoel was trying to take him away from me. 

“JAOEL!!” I cried. I don’t cry. I smirk, or spit, or hiss, or whisper. I do not “cry”. “JAOEL, PLEASE!! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, HE IS MY VINCIO!! BROTHER, PLEASE!!”

Jaoel turned, ignoring my incitement of a connection between us, whether brothers in service or in blood, and shook his head. “That’s impossible.” 

I saw blackness in the corners of my vision. The mint was in my lungs, choking me as it burned. I threw Jaoel across the room with one wing. Hope could not get away. 

“Eisai adelfi psychi mou lene oi lexeis, kai einai kathikom mou--” “I don’t understand,” Hope shouted, backing up, “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please. Leave me alone. Get off me!!” 

“Please, please, Chang- Min, I don’t want to hurt you. You are my vincio? Don’t you feel that too? Don’t you feel the little tug in your stomach? Right here. Say but words and it is my duty, whatever you wish, vincio.” 

He was scared. “I wish: you were fucking dead. Don’t ever come near me again.” 

And there went Hope. It is an attestment to either my wickedness or denial that I did not weep at the knowledge that I was not doomed because I couldn’t find it in myself to love, but rather because I couldn’t find it in myself to be lovable. 

Almighty:

Darcy was a hurricane. 

“You did what?!”

“I was going to save you!” Disney, however, is an ant. He knows his humanity floods his veins, no matter how many angels he thinks to taste. 

Darcy pauses, and it’s her turn to gasp for air. She hugs him fiercely. She clutches the back of his shirt and breathes in long nights spent on the trampoline in the neighbor’s yard, discussing adventures and high school. All of it blurs with the realization of what he did, what he’d be willing to do again, and she buries her face into his shoulder, shaking her head. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she whispers, voice unsteady. 

“You would have done it for me,” he replies. And that much is true, but it doesn’t make it better, not in her stomach, where she feels the weight of it. She would’ve tried to save him first, before offering herself as a sacrifice, and that much is only a difference in ideolgies, but it makes her feel so guilty. 

She means to say, “I need you, Disney. Don’t ever do anything stupid like that again.” But she knows, for once, that’s not what he needs. So instead she states rationally, “you did it to save me? I’m not any more or less valuble than you, dumbass. Try to die for me again and I’ll kill you, got it?” 

He nods, though the full meaning of statement will take longer for him to process than a nod. 

Darcy attacks Jaoel. She locks them both in her sleeping quarters and then releases her tired heart and throws herself at him again and again. 

“I DON’T NEED PROTECTING JAOEL!”

“You could’ve died! I was trying to--”

“WHAT? OR HE COULD’VE DIED! NOBODY GETS TO PLAY GOD HERE! LEAST OF ALL YOU!”

“But you--”

“DID YOU WANT THE CEREMONY TO CONTINUE?”

“No! By Caelum, of course not!! I thought Acacia was human, I thought it may have 

already started, and THAT THERE WOULD BE NO OTHER WAY!!”

“YOU KNEW I WAS HALF ANGEL?! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MY MOTHER?! 

“NOTHING! I swear! Darcy,” he took a deep breath and reached for her hands, “look, everything is just guesses, okay? I don’t know anything you don’t.”

“You know a hell of a lot more about Almighty than you’re telling us.”

“That’s true. The Bond-- I’m trying.”

“Are you working for Almighty, Jay?”

“No. I swear I’m not.”

“Did the Bond stop you from telling me your guess about my blood?” 

“.... No. But--”

Hurricane Darcy whirled away from him, slamming the open switch on the door, and hitting it when it opened slowly. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled after her.


	15. Jessica: Part Two

Still May 29th, 2021— 9 days

Mr. God has horrible things down here. Horrible things and my father has to know. Has to have known this whole time. He has horrible things locked up down here but nobody is going to believe me because my father is going to again bring up the small fact that I’m ABSOLUTELY CRAZY to save his own skin.

It feels wrong and shaky on my hand to write this, but I’m scared if I don’t record it now, I will wake up in the proper morning and not believe my own memory. It could’ve been a dream. A nightmare. Perhaps I’ll wake and this writing will be gone. That would be a relief.

There was a screeching sound, all the way down the elevator. The thing is well lit, 24/7, an assault of LED whiteness. The elevator is huge, and made of wrap around silver steel, entirely smooth on the insides like the inside of a shell. Despite the lack of physical danger, the elevator ride itself was indescribably horrifying alone. (Was it the Animalistic Screeching? The Sudden Temperature Drop? Who knows.) 

I essentially had my back glued to one of the walls the entire trip down, waiting for something to materialize in the too-large space with me. (A gold-covered, flesh-eating, basement dwelling monster, perhaps).

The screeching wasn’t just the elevator. That I am now sure of.

In a startling return of irony, 90% of level six seems to be water. Huge, great tanks of water, enclosed in strong, thick glass and metal shells. All of these inside our tiny bubble of human-made bunker which is surrounded by…. You know…. Water.

The tanks are all powerfully lit from underneath with white LEDs, arraigned in a neat grid along the concrete flooring.

And the tank directly in front of the elevator had a human skull in it.

Did I scream? Yes. Did this pathetic scream of terror end up on one of Mr. God’s video surveillance cameras? Of course. Did I also pee a little? I don’t need to answer that question.

The tanks were as follows:

A B C 

D E F

G H I

A) Clear water, what I can only presume to be either fish, amphibian, or reptile bones at the bottom. (Sorry, I didn’t pay enough attention in Biology.)

B) Empty, with water a dark blue-ish color.

C) Full to the top with planted seaweed, I couldn’t tell what color the water was through them, the weeds turned the whole tank into a sort of black shadow.

D) I honestly can’t remember. Hope it wasn’t something important.

E) Bright red water, which honestly scared me at first. It wasn’t blood, however, but coloring, (I’m like, 90% sure.) There were fish in tank E, not exotic fish like in an aquarium, but middle of the ocean fish that looked like maybe they were the ones that were made into fish ’n chips. There were six little grey fish in total, three swimming sluggishly around as though in jello, the other three unmoving, at the bottom. I’m no fish scientist, but I’m pretty sure fish float to the top of the tank when they die. All six seemed to be the same kind of fish (only difference being the dead, not dead bit) which confirmed my guess that whatever this setup was, it was for conducting some sort of experiments. I wondered at first what the three living fish did to get the lucky break of being the control group, thus letting them survive, but quashed that thought when one of the survivor fish swam directly into the glass, and then paddled confusedly away, sluggish and seemingly out of touch with its surroundings.

F) I honestly can’t remember this one either. I was a bit distracted at that point, once I’d got to that side of the room.

G) Oh, just the fricking skull. In dark blue water, like the deep, deep ocean. There were other bones there too, some quite probably human, some too small, but also definitely mammalian.

H) A warm, pinky color, stripes of cream-coloured cardstock waving around inside, attached with huge metal clamps to the top of the tank. (Watching the paper wave from its bindings like upside-down seaweed, it occurred to me how spotless the lab space was. 

Not a single metal death clamp lying around. Mr. God has to keep them somewhere. Does he have an extra closet labelled “extra creepy stuff”? Regardless he must have creepy equipment en masse somewhere, which is a thought horrifying enough to warrant continued pondering).

I) Tank I also had mammalian parts but they were…. Considerably less decomposed. Needless to say I didn’t hang around there very long, but there were some things I noticed without meaning to. Like the half-eaten cow heart. Or the chunky, red-meat consistency to the brown water.

Unfortunately the decomposing skulls and half-eaten cow organs are not the worst part of Mr. God’s basement. He also has, on level six, through a heavy wooden door connecting to the lab space, an office. And it’s locked for a reason.

Naturally upon seeing the door out of a medieval castle nestled within all this futuristic horror, I determined that behind it was indeed something important. If it looks out of place, it was built either before or after the structure it’s in. And the thing was huge, so it had to have been here since before this became the huge bunker it is. Which means it’s a central room, which means there’s a chance it’s got all a map of the place saying “mermaidian captives this way”, which would save me having to stumble around anymore of this.

There was a touch pad for the ID card in place of the lock, carved into the dark lacquered wood. I approached it apprehensively. I wanted my father’s card to work on it, because then I could get in without trying to break the lock and tripping every alarm in the compound. But, if his card worked, that meant he was deep, deep into the secrets down here, and had not only elected to not tell me anything about them, but was also most likely an enthusiastic part of making these sickening experiments a reality.

Click, buzz. The touchpad hummed pleasantly. The door swung open.

The office was full of pictures. Pictures of people. Or, pictures of mostly people. 

I scanned the faces staring back at me from three walls for one I recognized, and eventually found Nadia glaring at me with the fury of a cornered animal. In the picture, the background is blurred and distorted, by sunlight filtering through the water. There are several other figures behind Nadia, their hair loose and wild, and their faces unclear, but twisted, in anger or fear.

Nadia herself is older than I remember. Which makes sense. Her hair is longer, but there is no scar yet on her shoulder. The camera holder is looking at her at eye level, so they must have both been equally deep, deep beneath the surface. Nadia’s only just noticed the camera holder, whirling to face them, something blurred but most likely a weapon in her hand. She looks feral, but more so she looks frightened. The light of the camera flash is reflecting off her widened eyes.

Among the other faces in the pictures on the wall was my own: in the unenthusiastic headshot for my ID card. Beside me was the same headshot photo of my father, and then in that same area, headshots of all of us, all the people living here. He had pictures of all of us on the wall, with sticky notes, and string scattered around linking us to one another. My photo was relatively uncluttered, with only one sticky note. In Mr. God’s handwriting were the names of my prescriptions, and a bullet pointed note. “Some evidence that she is aware of the Custodi. Cannot confirm. Further investigation only level yellow priority.”

There’s a picture of the man who came up from the basements bloody—James. His name was James. His picture has a simple X drawn through it in thick black marker.

It was easy to tell the pictures of those living here (clean headshots), and those not living here (blurry, no smiles). Among the blurred were mermaids, dozens of them, mainly taken underwater, some taken of them in glass tanks, like in a zoo. Or a lab.

Mermaids. Plural. Not just Nadia. He has pictures of them, and they’re real, and there are more of them and that means Nadia’s real. It has to mean that, right? It has to. Scattered among the photos are ancient drawings from all over the world. Scientific shorthand notes, graphs, charts, and biological diagrams. Pin numbers for each of them. They’ve been reduced to numbers like we have been.

Beyond them there are the same sort of notes, graphs, charts, diagrams and numbers pinned to photos of other people. Or, again, mostly people. There’s several photos of young people with missing limbs, one with a missing eye, all straining against thick metal chains, eyes rabid and mouths foaming. One of them, a young man, tall and dark skinned, has no visible injuries, and nothing visibly missing, but he looks the angriest, wrists rubbed red where they’re pulling at the cuffs. His eyes are less conscious than the photos around him more clouded with rage and confusion. He’s the only of the rabid eyed people without an X across his picture.

Some of the photos are in black and white, and the equipment in them old. Which makes no sense, because here-- SeaTo-- the Bubble isn’t that old at all. Neither is TexCorp in general. Rochester himself is old. Where was his creepy lab before here, in Florida?

There’s a girl standing up straight in…. a box of sorts. The box looks like a coffin with its lid off, only upright, with the boxed off approximation of a ballerina’s pose, arms out to the sides. The girl looks deep in terrified concentration, her eyes closed and shiny, her forehead sweaty. She has close shaven, black hair, and wears a black leotard and black ballerina shoes, nothing else. The box has spikes under where her arms are extended, forcing her to keep them raised. There are straps of black material knotted at her wrists and waist, stopping her from moving forwards and out of the box. To stay above the spikes, she’s on her tip-toes, on point like a ballerina. To the one side of her picture are clinical photographs of black, broken toes and bleeding welts. On the other side, diagrams and x-rays comparing bones and muscle. “Dolly Box” is scrawled hastily on a post-it in Mr. God’s messy lettering. Beneath that a name, the only name on any of the pictures. “Søren.”

Surrounding her medical analysis and torture box are layers upon layers of paintings. Acrylic paint on utilitarian canvas, secured to the walls with heavy duty duct tape. Paintings of angels. An angel girl with huge eagle’s wings, holding a longsword, eyes ablaze, standing above the artist. There are multiple paintings of angels in chains, wings bent, heads bowed. Paintings of winged armies, of an emblem on metal and in bursting colour and painted as though copied from a brand on flesh. Angels crossing swords in front of enormous stone towers. Red tracked cobblestones and impressionistic battle. Beyond angels there are normal things: underwater. Cars. A girl swimming up from a sinking truck, shedding her hoodie. Beyond the buildings underwater are deep ocean creatures, like dinosaurs, and because the whole mermaid part is real I’m very, very concerned that those monsters with the gaping maws and the dead eyes are too. There’s paintings of mermaids. Of them fighting underwater with strangely human firearms. A mix of the impossible and the desperately human. Faces and faces and faces painted. One of a girl with short hair with a bullet hole between her eyes.

I ran from the doorway into the office room like it could swallow me up if I was too slow and snatched the picture of Nadia, and then dashed back out. Proof. Tangible proof. Then I sprinted away even faster than I’d come in back to the elevator. And now I have to go back up.

May 30th, 2021—10 days after

You know tragedy really does makes the frivolous concerns of five minutes ago seem foolish. And, in theory, that form of cosmic perspective is immeasurably valuable. But after the sixth time in one lifetime, and fourth time in ten days, it begins to wear on the nerves.

For me, that’s:

1) I met Nadia.

2) Nadia disappeared.

3) The world ended.

4) Nadia reappeared.

5) I found the private safehouse we’re living in is hiding a secret underground experimentation facility. (Not as surprising as I’d like it to be upon further thought, but nonetheless, not something I wanted to find out.) Not to mention my father is a part of that evil experimenter cult and not only helps them do morally wrong things on the regular, but also presumably knew Nadia was real, and allowed me to think I was seeing things for the majority of my childhood.

6) I got arrested. (Again, less surprising than I’d wanted).

When the doors of the elevators opened last night, I was already shaking at the knowledge of what I’d done, and that I still had to slip my father’s ID card back into his pocket at breakfast before this would be over. But I shouldn’t have worried about that. Mr. God’s men were there as the doors opened, blocking both escapes down the two directions of the hall. Not my father, other men, but I assume he knows by now. The nearest of them sprayed me with something bitingly chemical and I blacked out.

And then I woke up.

In my sleeping bay.

The door is unlocked. I’m free to leave my bay. I have all my memories. I remember everything. I’ve read and re-read what I wrote last night to be sure but—I remember everything. They didn’t know I’d hidden written pages on me, and I suppose without them as proof I would’ve been tempted to call the whole thing a nightmare.

There’s no way out of the bunker, as far as I know. And even if I somehow could escape, I have no idea if there are any other survivor bunkers out there. If there’s anything other than miles of empty, eventually deadly, sea.

Mr. God seems to have complete control over nearly all the able bodied adults in the compound, and all of the guns. Not to mention he’s also apparently got some pretty creepy experimental tech up his sleeve, and live video of every room and hallway. I can’t fight that myself.

And I can’t tell anyone here. He knows that. What would me trying to tell people achieve? I’m Doctor Peirce’s crazy daughter.

But I’m going back. For Nadia. I’m not going to have any backup, any help. But I’m going to make Mr. God regret leaving me in one piece with all my wits and all my memories. I’m going back down and I’m going to get her.


	16. To Introduce Desperation, To Introduce Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo I'm well aware that the only people who read this anywhere i post it are my boufriend, my mum and maybe a couple of my friendos, but it makes me happy so imma keep posting ittttttt <3 <3
> 
> ALSO I've posted just over half the chapters of book one on here now fam which is A) Crazy and also B) cRAZY. I think I wanna print off a paper copy of the whole thing once I'm finished editing and posting all the chapters because a big part of the appeal for the original project for me was how mixed media I wanted it to be (pictures, different textures to paper, whole "book" looking like a bunch of different journal books thrown together) anyways yee yee if you're reading this I love you friend thank u so much <3<3<3<3

[click.] 

[RECORDING]

Darcy: 

The best way I can describe the scene is that Almighty was dragging Romaniel. Which, yes, looked quite comical and impossible. Almighty’s hair and dress were plastered against her body with golden blood, but her face looked as sweet and airbrushed as ever. She dumped Romaniel’s shuddering form onto the concrete floor of the dimly lit hallway. As he rolled onto his back, it became evident that he had a 6 inch long steak knife sticking handle-side out from his chest. 

“You.” Almighty pointed a golden-bloody finger at Crashtest, and said sweetly, “could you please tell him to stop stabbing himself? In this state he’s not of any use at all.” Romaniel coughed out blood onto the grey floor and moaned lowly, curling in on himself at her feet. She looked unimpressed with his display of distress. 

Crashtest found his voice, “s- stop! I don’t wish you were dead!” With another cough, Romaniel pulled the knife free of his ribcage and threw it spasmodically away from himself. Daisy covered Acacia’s eyes. 

Rapid-fire whispering filled the space. 

Almighty stepped daintily over him and strode over to Aedyn. “Listen to me closely, little boy,” she instructed, “you don’t know the magnitude of the power you’re playing with.” She looked over her shoulder at Romaniel, “how have you managed to Bond with a human, Romaniel? Hmm? Tell me the truth. What have you done?”

Romaniel coughed and sneered up at her. “Sometimes stalking the celebrities of the species on the internet just isn’t enough.” Almighty looked both horrified and disgusted, reminiscent of the way human elderly people do upon hearing a political opinion they disagree with. “Damon,” she spat, with an accent. 

“You should know, sweet thing,” Romaniel said weakly. She looked instantly bored again. “What, ‘sweet thing’? No cutesie nickname for me, Romaniel?” He coughed his way up to his knees, “sure, you can have a nickname, it’ll be…. ‘Continual Pain In My Ass’”. 

She laughed a tinkling laugh, “goodbye, Romaniel. I no longer require any service you could provide me with.”

He looked away from her, even as she disappeared, and turned to Crashtest, watching intensely him for a moment, as though trying to communicate telepathically. “Stop it,” Crashtest demanded, and Romaniel abruptly looked down. 

“Can you…. Reach out please?” Romaniel asked quietly of Crashtest. The small assembly squinted at him. Slowly, Crashtest raised an arm in a strange sort of reach. Romaniel huffed a laugh, but continued to look at the ground. “Not with your arm, with your mind. The Bond…. It’s very strong for me right now. I can’t feel your mind anywhere.”

“What?” Crashtest asked, voicing the question that sat heavy in the room. “Oh…. I….” Roman looked lost for a moment, “I’m reaching out my soul to you.”

“Your what? Please say that’s different than angelically feeling me up?” Crashtest immediately regretted his choice of words, as now true baited silence hung in the room. However he was comforted by the fact that if the angel dared say yes, somebody would punch him, most likely Darcy. Which would be exellent. 

“No, it’s like…. Ugh…. All your english words are synonyms, but they don’t mean the same thing? Care? Friendship? Love?” 

“Those are, in fact, not the same thing,” Darcy clarified, hands on her hips. “I know…. But, we don’t communicate like you do,” Romaniel continued, “ask Jaoel. We don’t converse…. Aloud. We communicate with feelings, it’s simpler. When I try to explain it to you I have to translate those feelings into Latin, and Latin into English. What I’m trying to say is that I’m reaching out, because I have to, the Bond is hurting in my wrists and neck and ankles. It’s making my lips and fingertips numb my blood is moving so fast. It hurts. So I have to reach out and ask you-- and you can say yes or no-- but…. For care?” 

“Friendship?” Crashtest asked in disbelief. “No…. Love? Is that the word?” 

“Marriage?” Crashtest asked again, somehow more incredulous, his voice daring Romaniel to answer wrong. “Based on the look on your face, I’m guessing that is the wrong word too,” Romaniel replied, ”.... since that’s more of a human convention I know little about.... also you look very close to punching me. Really, I’m reaching out to say….”

“Hello,” Jaoel offered for him quietly, body lauguage still overly guarded. 

“Hello?” Crashtest echoed. 

“Yes, ‘hello’,” Romaniel decided triumphantly, “is that so different from ‘I-love-you’?”

“Yes,” Crashtest replied, “yes, it is so different. It’s so so so different. You can say hello to anyone. Somebody you love or a stranger.”

“Why would you bother saying hello to a stranger?” Romaniel asked. 

“I don’t know,” Crashtest tried to respond, increasingly losing footing in his struggle to understand how the angel’s minds worked, “because it’s polite? And hey, you’re a stranger to me. To all of us.”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Romaniel replied quietly, “Cupio scire te. Vocat anima mea ad te, propter te autem non vis intelligere simulare. Nisi ut beati sint tibi vis faciam ut ultra non faciam tibi dolor. Scio vos non sentire quasi vinculum facio: sed precor similis sit causa. Cupio cognoscere animum tuum.”

Jay looked quietly shocked. Not scandalized, but surprised, simply floored. 

I motioned to Jay, and he helped me get rope to tie the bleeding angel up. Romaniel himself sarcastically offered to help from his knees. Jay turned to Crashtest, “could you ask Romaniel to stay in these ropes and on this chair, please?” Crashtest regarded Romaniel and frowned, “what exactly does--” 

Romaniel cut him off bitterly, “I have to do what you say. Apparently it doesn’t work both ways, for a human and an angel….” He paused then composed himself, energy returning, and tried for a smirk that landed more like a grimace, but the effect of his intent still stood, “wanna find out?” 

The room glared at him. “Chang- Min, touch your nose for me,” Romaniel said 

innocently. Crashtest flipped him off instead. “See, doesn’t work both ways,” Romaniel sighed. Crashtest told him to stay in the ropes and chair. 

I motioned over Disney, Daisy, Crashtest…. and reluctantly Jaoel. “You mean I can tell him to do anything,” Crashtest demanded, “even tell the truth?” Jaoel nodded, eyes widening. “That’s great!” Disney whispered, “Jaoel can’t tell the truth, but he has to.” 

I nodded slowly, but Jay shook his head, “be careful. I know him. And right now he’s desperate, that makes him dangerous. He’ll twist things around any way he can, even if he has to tell the techical truth. You can’t trust everything he says.”

“It’s better than anything we’ve had yet,” I hissed back. 

[RECORDING]

Darcy: This is Darcy Adara. What you are about to hear is a recording of the interrogation of Soterasral Romaniel. Ques-- Jay, don’t you fucking dare interrupt me. Questions will be asked and.. 

“Crashtest”/ Aedyn Lee/ Chang- Min Lee: Aedyn Lee.

Darcy: ….Aedyn Lee will repeat them to Romaniel to verify the authenticity of his answers. Please state your full name. 

Aedyn Lee: Please state your full name. 

Romaniel: Soterasral Romaniel, Son of Rogziel. Rogziel meaning “punisher”, Soterasral, my chosen name, meaning “he who stirs the fire of God” and Romaniel, my given name, coming to mean “he who walks hell”. 

Darcy: I was aware that chosen names are associated with a meaning. However I thought the given name’s of Rogziel’s children held no meaning. 

Aedyn Lee: Do given names have meaning?

Romaniel: Mine does. 

Darcy: How does your bond with Aedyn function? Is he fully human? 

Aedyn Lee: How does your bond with me function? Am I fully human? 

Romaniel: Yes, you are human, Chang- Min. It’s nothing you’ve done. Don’t worry. I’ve been drinking human blood for nearly 10 years in an attempt to get closer to humanity. My father told me when I was young that I would never be able to love another angel. But to escape his control over me, I needed to Bond with somebody who wasn’t him. I needed to escape him. He hurts me. 

Darcy: You look extremely surprised to have said that. Did you not mean to?

Aedyn Lee: Did you not mean to say that?

Romaniel: I cannot control what I say with you asking, Chang- Min. 

Aedyn Lee: Excuse me, Darcy.... My Korean name is reserved for my father, asshole. You do not get to use it. 

Romaniel: Understood. 

Darcy: What did Almighty mean when she called Acacia a demon? 

Aedyn Lee: What did Almighty mean when she called Acacia a demon? 

Romaniel: I’m guessing she wasn’t using it based on the slang definition, like she does when she’s trying to insult me. In proper contect, damon refers to an angel fallen from heaven. 

Acacia: Darcy? 

Darcy: Yes?

Acacia: My brother used to say that my Grandmama, my Abuela, came down from heaven, an angel, and married my Abuelo. I have always known I am some part fallen angel, Ángel caido, but my papá never believed in such things. I’m sorry I did not tell you. I’m still human. 

Daisy: That’s quite enough, pumpkin. Of course you’re still human. 

Darcy: Any other questions?

Hanna: How am I supposedly half- Custodi? I know both of my parents. They’re human. 

Aedyn Lee: Answer her. 

Romaniel: Hell if I know, God Girl. Mommy had a summer fling with a pretty, flippered 

gentleman? 

Hanna: YOU DO NOT GET TO TALK ABOUT MY MOTHER LI--

Darcy: Hey! Everybody--

Jaoel: ROMAN! YOU--

Aedyn Lee: SHUT IT!! 

Darcy: I’m very sorry Hanna. Romaniel, would you care to elaborate in a more.... respectful manner?

Romaniel: As I could have put better, I don’t know who your parents are or were, Hanna. However I trust Almighty’s judgement on the guess that one of your parents was human, and the other a Custodi. She seemed pretty sure, sure enough to want to use you for blood sacrifice, so.... you’ve got that going for yourself. Further specifics to where you came from, however, I cannot help you with. 

Darcy: Other questions, please?

Disney: How do you kill an angel?

Aedyn Lee: How do you kill an angel?

Romaniel: You would need a weapon forged in the same astrophysical plan as them, heaven. Weapons from earth affect only our earth form and can cause pain but no lasting damage to our life force. 

Aedyn Lee: And we could kill Rogziel with a weapon of heaven? 

Romaniel: No. I said you could kill an normal angel like that. Rogziel is a little too 

obsessed with death, specifically his own. He’s safe guarded himself, with unspeakably dark ”magic” if you will, although I don’t like using that word to describe his power. 

Aedyn Lee: How can we kill him then?

Romaniel: You need sacrifice, Aedyn. 

Aedyn Lee: Please. Elaborate. 

Romaniel: (Sigh) You would need to recreated the “spell”, if you will, that he used. And for that you’d need the blood of three champions: angel, custodi, and human. And the-- I hesitate to call it a “prophecy”, it’s more of a self created spell or recipe-- it’s not really a prophecy if he wrote the damn thing himself-- but it requires cooperation of.... (cough) one of every species that came before you. 

Darcy: What do you mean? 

Aedyn Lee: Who came before us?

Romaniel: Why do you think humanity is dying so “en masse”, and in such a total fashion? Your time on this world is up, Fangs. You’re not the first and you’re not going to be the last. You’ve failed as a species. Whatever you want to believe in, whatever higher power, they’ve decided humanity isn’t worth it anymore, time for another try. Do you want to know what the translation of the word “human” is in my language, Fangs? “Man” means attempt, and the prefix “Hu” means number 17. 17 attempts.

Darcy: What?

Romaniel: Look, I’ve told you the truth. The one truth you’re not allowed to know. Now, I don’t know what you want from me-- 

Aedyn Lee: Save us. 

Romaniel: I CAN’T. Don’t ask that of me. 

Aedyn Lee: I’m asking. 

Romaniel: Please. Don’t. I CAN’T. I C-CAN’T! [coughing]

….

Darcy: Stop it. Look…. [heavy breath].... I’m sorry, you guys. [A pause.] As of right now, we know this. I know this. Romaniel, you’re going to tell us how to save what is left of our friends and families. 

Romaniel: I don’t know what it’s going to take to get this through your thick skull, Fangs. I can’t do jack--

Darcy: THEN GET US SOMEBODY WHO CAN! I WANT TO TALK TO ALMIGHTY! 

Jaoel: WHY--?!

Romaniel: THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS! SHE’S TRYING-- 

Aedyn Lee: Do what she says! 

Romaniel: SHE’S TRYING TO SAVE YOU SORRY COCKROACHES--

[There is a loud knock on the door.]

A guard of James Rochester’s: Open this door immediately! That’s an order! 

Darcy: *a solid minutes’ worth of cursing* 

[Door bangs open. Footsteps. Yelling.]

Jessica: Don’t touch me! Get off! Please! Help! 

[Yelling. Mostly Darcy’s voice.]

Jessica: Listen to me! He’s hiding things in the basement! You have to listen to me! He’s hurting her! Help me! Please!

[Sounds of a fight. As I understand it, Ms. Adara jumped Jessica’s captors, and Jaoel used some sort of magic to render them unconscious.]

Jessica: Thank you! Thank you! [Breathing.] Come with me, you need to see his office. 

Darcy: His office? You mean Rochester’s?

Jessica: Mr. God’s, yes. But first, I need you to help me get Nadia. 

[End Of Recording]


	17. Nadia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long ass hiatus you guys — things have kinda been all over the place for me this last month. But yay you get to meet Nadia aka best girl. I’m working on a Detroit become Human fic and a BNHA fic right now so mmmmmh look forwards to that if I finish either of them any time soon lol — much love to anyone reading this ♡ ♡

Darcy:  
We flew down the halls, red twisting alarms blaring to life somewhere else on the same level of the compound. The elevator was at the end of the East hallway. Between us and the elevator were approximately 12 of Rochester’s men, armed and unfriendly.   
I punched a middle-aged man in the throat, and the element of surprise was great enough that I could grab his hair and throw him into the metal wall before he could so much as move. Another one tripped Jessica, and Crashtest attempted a clumsy cross that did some solid damage. Before the mechanic worker pushed himself off the wall and threw Crashtest sprawling onto the concrete floor.   
The smell of lavender filled the corridor so strongly I stumbled away from the guy I was grappling with to plug my nose and clutch at my face. When I could breathe again, Jay was yanking me along towards the elevator, Rochester’s men sliding to the floor, their eyes rolling backwards as we passed.   
The elevator was stunningly quiet. Me, Jay, Disney, Crashtest, Hanna and Jessica stood gasping as the doors dinged shut, and it began to slide downwards. Jessica had punched the button for 14 and it alighted itself pleasantly. 11 levels into the forbidden zone.   
The first thing I noticed was the noise. “Is that.. Machine?” I asked, “or animal?” Jessica turned to me, “human.”   
The elevator door dinged open.   
Level 14 looked like the set of a horror movie, a long hallway lined with doors, its concrete floors wet with still water, no windows and no exits save for the elevator we had come down in. All of it dimly lit in dispersed and buzzing caged LED light fixtures. If the compound was Rochester’s beast, we’d found its belly. As we slowly inched forwards, I became acutely aware of the scratching noises, punctuated by the occasional muffled whisper. We were not alone.  
I reached back a bruised hand to hold Disney’s and pull him along. He ran a thumb over my bloody knuckles out of habit.   
Jessica turned to look at me with wide eyes, and I realized she was quite young, no older than us, couldn’t have been out of high school yet. “There are people. Or, mostly people, in some of these rooms,” she said quietly to me, “they need help.”   
Hanna strode quickly to the first door on the right and yanked it’s handle. “It’s locked.”   
Jay gently pushed her aside, and put his hand to the lock. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I grabbed his arm. “Whoa there, speedy, wanna think this one through a little bit first? That doesn’t seem like the best idea. If it’s locked, it’s locked for a reason.”   
Hanna turned and glared at me. “Yeah, it’s locked because he’s keeping human prisoners!” I yanked Jay away from the door. “Look, Hanna,” I crossed my arms and stared her down, “We’re going to help them, we are. But we need to take precautions first. Can you tell where that scratching is coming from? “Mostly people” is not people enough for me.”  
Jaoel leaned down to whisper, “that’s unfortunate given your own blood ratio, Darcy.”   
I slapped him, and he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blunt palm of my hand.   
“I said precautions!” I yelled, half at Jay, half at the rest of them, the volume of my outburst reverberating through the hall, “not that I wasn’t going to do anything! Look, we need--”   
Before I could finish my sentence there was an echoing crack from down the hall. Jessica stood, feet firmly planted on the concrete floor, tightly clutching the foot long metal handle of a door, rusted under a long ago flow of water, the door in front of her swinging open. “Try and stop me, angel bitch,” she said, not in a vicious tone, but one that was completely matter of fact.   
So we freed them. Jessica and Jay blew open doors and we ran inside.   
The rooms were not only cells, but psychotic laboratories. There were syringes and scales and measuring tapes and scalpels and the intruding scent of hospital cleaner. The rooms were much brighter than the hall, each of them sporting a panel of LEDs over head, which bled into the hallway.   
Many of them were empty, like the one that had drawings upon drawings of angel wings,   
on papers taped haphazardly to the walls.   
Many of them had the clear remnants of inhabitants: a bed with unmade covers, scratches on the walls, a blood stain across the floor.   
There was a room with broken shackles, five dead cameras pointed at the floor, and a wash of what looked like blood, but was a dark gold color. Jay stood shock still in the doorway for a minute, before I realized and approached him. “You okay?” I asked gingerly. Around us, the others were breaking down doors with a ferocity I’d never seen in them before, but I felt detached.  
“Angel blood, dried,” he whispered back, “but I don’t understand. How could he trap an angel?”   
“This guy is much more dangerous than we knew,” I whispered back. “But why?” Jay murmured, staring at the shackles but not really seeing them, “why would anyone go to such measures?”   
I shook my head. The answer to that seemed obvious. “To save himself. And-- if he loves anybody-- to save them too. If you knew the end of the world was coming in your lifetime, wouldn’t you do something?”   
Jay just breathed in shakily and backed away from the room, shutting the door.   
We continued down the hall, to where Jessica was leading the forefront of the attack on the doors with her rusty handle. She’d open a door, and sometimes be met with a terrified face, but she’d shake her head and mutter something inaudible, leaving the shaking prisoner for the others.   
Some of the rooms did indeed have living people inside.   
They were all different. Most of the prisoners were crudely shackled to the wall. There was a young man, maybe in his early twenties, with dark skin and darker eyes, who looked up at us like we were threats and he wouldn’t-- or couldn’t-- stop repeating, “yes, my lord. It must be done. Yes, my lord. It must be done. Yes, my lord--”  
There was a room with two women in hospital gowns, huddled in the corner, who I approached slowly. But when I saw that one had her neck at an angle that wasn’t quite right, I froze, and Jay pushed past me. He checked their pulses and came out shaking his head, scooping me up to move me along.   
There was a room with a little boy, no older than Acacia, or one of Disney’s little sisters, who was huddled in the corner behind a shelf of medical supplies, presumably because of all the noise we were making. When I entered slowly he came at me with only a syringe and a strangled shout, and I nearly threw him into the wall before I realized how small he was. Instead I grabbed him up into my arms, the syringe filled with god knows what sailing past my shoulder. Jay’s lavender fog quickly flooded us and the boy slumped down, unconscious.   
Disney held out his arms, and I let him sling the boy up onto his back, securely asleep.   
By the time we’d encountered six survivors, there were only three rooms left. One on the left, one on the right, and one at the very end of the hall. Jessica wrenched open the door on the left first, and for a moment she paled, shocked, before letting out a sob that seemed to be in both relief and horror.   
Inside the room on the left was a body sized tank of water, and in it a very dead, but very real mermaid, hooked up to various monitors, all flatlining. Their eyes stared off into nothingness as they bobbed softly in the fluctuating water. We all stared in shock, except Jay, who muttered a soft prayer under his breath, and Jessica, who rushed to the room on the right.   
The room on the right was nearly identical, and she cried out before I could turn. At first I was sure there was another body. As I finally turned, I saw Jessica standing in the doorway before another tank, bubbling softly, a tailed young woman suspended in the unnaturally blue water. Like an aquarium, but with a concrete grey backdrop and a possibly dead mermaid.   
Jessica choked out a word that seemed to be the name “Nadia”, and a monitor beeped weakly. “Nadia!” Jessica cried louder, cracking her handle against the metal door frame and scaring the rest of us into silence. The monitor beeped again, an illustration of a brain alighting on the back wall, and my gaze shifted to find a screen displaying a quiet heartbeat.   
The heartbeat was too slow to be that of a conscious person. I walked forwards towards Jessica, intending to explain to her that whoever this girl in the tank was-- with the abyss of black hair, the pale, vein webbed skin, the pink eyelids, the too ridged rib cage, and the immobilized dark, iridescent oil spill tail-- she was in a coma, she wasn’t conscious.   
“Shut up,” Jessica commanded before I’d even opened my mouth. “What?” I asked, taken completely off guard, “but her heart--”  
“I know,” Jessica snapped quietly, “their hearts beat slower than ours, they have to for them to survive the cold temperatures at the bottom of the ocean. I know that heartbeat.”  
As she spoke she moved towards the tank, until both of her hands were up against the glass. “Nadia, please--”  
The mermaid girl’s eyes opened and she sucked in a breath-- a breath of water, which looked extremely incorrect, but seemed to be fine for her-- as she blinked again and focused on Jessica.   
“Jessie?”   
“Yeah, yeah, are you okay?” Jessica was half-crying, half-beaming, and starting to jump to try and unlock the top of the tank. Jay flicked his hand, and the lock popped open. Nadia ripped out the IVs and monitors, red blood mixing with the artificial blue of the water to create sickly trails of purple. She struggled to reach the top, and for a moment it looked like she was going to pitch herself over the lid of the tank, until Jay frowned in concentration, and she floated gently to a sitting position just above the ground.   
She looked up in surprise, and her eyes met Jay’s. “Notam occisor, branded angel,” she hissed vehemently, struggling backwards and barring very inhuman, very sharp, shark-like teeth. We all took a large step back, but Jay didn’t drop her. He just confined her to the space she was floating in, and frowned.   
“Hey, fishbitch,” I hissed back, barring my little human teeth as she had, “he’s helping you out, so why don’t you chill.”   
She scowled at me, and then at him for a moment, before swallowing and nodding.   
“Jessie,” she said, turning. As she saw the mermaid floating dead in the room across the hall, her eyes widened, and she began to cry.   
In a way that humanized her, because the rest of us relaxed in sympathy. Jaoel set Nadia gently into Jessica’s arms, who seemed to have no trouble carrying her entire weight bridal style. Nadia buried her head into Jessica’s shoulder, and they mumbled inaudibly back and forth for a moment, before Nadia kissed her cheek sweetly, and began to cry again.   
Apart from the shark teeth she really did seem human.   
Jessica led the other prisoners back towards the elevator, with Nadia still in her arms, and I approached the door at the end of the hall.   
Jay popped the lock open with a click and a hiss, and I nudged the door with the toe of my shoe. It swung open slowly to reveal the most concerningly decorated room yet. The walls were littered with not only diagrams but pictures, paintings. They depicted not only the Wave, encompassing the world, but also mermaids fighting in the water, angels bowing in droves, a white winged man in uniform standing on a raised dais soaked in blood (the Brand on wings like Jay’s), bodies in the water, and monstrous creatures all half-human and half something else and animalistic.   
In the center of the room was a pile of mattresses, topped with an assortment of bedraggled stuffed animals and dolls, and colorful blankets. In one corner, stood upright, was an odd kind of coffin. It had a choker unstrapped where the neck of the body would go, and space for two arms to be held outright at ninety degree angles. Lining the bottom of the space for the arms were metallic spikes, sharpened and clean. There was below the coffin a lid, propped up on it’s side.   
On the floor of the room, lying flat on her back and facing the decorated ceiling, was a young girl. She had dark hair cut short, mocha skin, and when she rose from the floor to face us, her eyes were a muted brown, milky and unfocused. She was blind, but she faced us with a scared look, aware of our presence.   
“Who’s there?” She asked, and her voice was sharp and sure. “Ah- Um-- My name’s Darcy,” I responded, unsure how to introduce myself, “I get that you’re a prisoner here, and we-- my friends and I-- want to help you.”   
“I wish I was only a prisoner here,” she responded, cocking her head, “I’m more than that. My name is Tilly. I’m the heiress to this prison. I’m God’s daughter.”  
“Rochester?” I asked in disbelief, “you’re Rochester’s kid?” She nodded, mouth pulled flat in a tight white line of a grimace. “I was weak, and he made me strong. He took away my eyes, he helped me to see the other side.”  
“Other side?” I was at this point convinced of the screaming stockholm syndrome emanating from this girl, and I was inching towards her, hoping to bring her safely back upstairs. “The After,” she explained, “heaven. Hell. Eden. What will be left when we are gone. I can see the future.”  
“Uh-hun, okay,” I responded vaguely, “okay.” She frowned, “why don’t you believe me, Darcy? Kalaziel Jaoel, do you believe me?” I froze, looked back at Jay, then again at the blind girl. She grimaced again in that far-away sort of way, and pointed behind her, at a color picture in paint, directly on the wall behind the bed.   
It was me, staring directly out from the wall. Behind me a fire burned, and I hefted a sword above my head, with both feet directly on the ground. On one side was a smaller version of me, staring off and away. This headshot was surrounded by a soft grey fog, and I was smiling. Behind this face was a swirling black nothingness. On the other side was me again, looking blank, staring off the other direction. There was no gleam in my eyes like the other two, and on my forehead was a tidy bullet hole.  
“Darcy Adara,” the blind girl smiled, “daughter of heaven, and of earth. Your death approaches us swiftly. A death by your angel’s hand.” She pointed to Jaoel, who stood motionless. “I would never--” he began to protest.   
I walked ridgedly towards her, on autopilot. She screamed as I did, and I stumbled back into Jay. “No!” She screeched.   
As quickly as she’d gone off she quieted, and said calmly, “I WILL go with you, Darcy Adara. But you do not touch me.”   
I nodded weakly, blinking dumbly, looking between her and the painted wall. She stood with perfect coordination, looking at my face, but not into my eyes.   
“His office is on the sixth floor,” Jessica called, “past all the tanks. You go, I’ll bring Nadia and her up.” I looked between the blind girl and Jessica, before nodding, entrusting our new prison escapee to our new ally.   
I ran ahead, and Jay followed. The two of us loaded into the elevator, and rode it up in silence. We stopped and leaped out on floor six, and I pressed the door close button as we did, hoping it would go directly down to the others.  
“Gross,” I whispered, unable to stop myself. There was a menagerie of contents within the tanks of this floor, but far too many of the specimens were dead. We walked the length of the room to the the only wooden door in the entire compound. Starkly out of place, the polished oak was clearly been inset into its door frame when the compound was being built. There was a spot for a key card, but it seemed to be unlocked. I pushed it open, and the motion sensitive lights flickered to life.   
The room was nearly the most bizarre thing yet. To put it into perspective: mermaids no longer made the top 3 most bizarre things I was going to fight or save within any given day. A blind girl who had drawn me with a bullet through my head in perfect detail certainly did. But an office full of overflowing files on every person in the compound, oceanic maps of mermaidian activity, graphs, charts, and grey scale photographs of human experimentation patients fell somewhere in between.   
We arrived back on the main floor one elevator trip after the others.   
And Rochester’s face when the when he saw us dragging a bloodied up mermaid out of the basement. Along with the seven other prisoners, including his supposed daughter, huddled against the wall in front of the elevator. Not panicked, or evil, no. Exasperated.   
Finally he saw that we were showcasing said mermaid to the general public, and his supposed daughter standing defiantly beside her, holding Hanna’s sleeve, and then he looked panicked. That was it, that was proof for me that he was at fault for their imprisonment.


	18. To Introduce Reason, To Introduce Rebellion

The dining hall was in shock. Of those who worked for James Rochester, half rushed to his side to defend him, while half surged forwards to attack him. 

Jessica placed Nadia carefully into Crashtest’s arms, and strode forwards. Her father reached out to stop her, and she hit his outstretched arms away, continuing on towards Rochester with a deadly focus. “I want to kill him,” she said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms. 

Jaoel, ever the voice of peace, spoke up against her. “We need to think that throu--”

“You saw what he did! What he’s doing!” Jessica persisted. She had no weapon other than a rusted door handle in her hand, but the room seemed to have forgotten, several guards levelling guns at her. As they did several more guards leveled guns on them, making the decision to side with the girl. Mr. Rochester, for his part, stayed silent. 

Darcy clambered up onto the nearest table, stepping around and over nearly-empty and forgotten food trays. “No! This needs to be fair! This will be a democracy! We will vote! We will have a case for and against the defendant.” 

Jessica stepped shakily onto the table beside Darcy. Jaoel made a sound of protest. 

“Darcy,” he urged, “be careful. Darcy, voting to decide a man’s life isn’t democracy, it’s discussing murder justified by the presence of mob-mentality.” 

She gave him a warning glare.

“Mr. Rochester, please state your case for the court,” Darcy began, “is there anything you have to say to explain yourself?” Rochester turned in place, putting his back to her, and addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen. These children are confused, and unstable. The girl wishing to attack me, Jessica, has a record of schizophrenic outbursts. And as for this one-” he motioned to Nadia, “-I don’t know who this poor creature…. Girl is, but I assure you she will swiftly be given the best possible medical assistance--”

He reached out an aged hand for the Custodi, Nadia, and was stopped only by a low growl from Jessica. 

Darcy addressed the crowd. “Mr. James Rochester is hiding human prisoners in the basement levels of this building, and scientifically experimenting on them--” From the crowd an adult voice yelled, “you callin’ that thing human?” 

“-- He’s hurting and killing people below floor three! He’s a monster, and he owes you an explanation. He’s not telling you things that you have the right to know!” Despite the gnawing worry, the shouts of the crowd were predominantly angry. 

They would’ve voted him dead. Then all of them, and specifically one of them, would’ve had his blood on their hands. 

“Stop!” Hanna pushed her way forwards, and onto the table beside Jessica and Darcy. “This isn’t right. He might be a killer, but we don’t have to be. Jessica, you’re just feeding Darcy’s fire now, and nobody needs that. Stop it. And Darcy, you too, stop it right now.”

She turned back to the crowd and continued, “He deserves to be locked up, and we deserve the truth--” “Are you an idiot?” Darcy whispered vehemently, “these people are scared, they need someone to blame. Let them blame him.”

“We are not killers!” Hanna projected, “lock him up, he deserves it. But there are people here, now, who are the victims, and they need our help. That has to be our priority.” 

Now the room was divided. “Lock him up!” somebody shouted in agreement. “I’m not helping that thing, her kind are what made the ocean rise. We can’t trust any of them!” Somebody else yelled. An old woman pushed her way forwards, loudly demanding the truth. 

One of the workers raised his gun towards Rochester, but Hanna leapt from the table to stand between them. The sharp report of gunfire pierced the incoherent babble, and the yelling turned to panicked screams. There’s a general assumption that if a gun was fired, somebody had to have been shot in such a crowded space, and crowd surged away from the noise. A woman tried to wrestle a guard’s weapon away from him. It fired, and ricocheted off the roof. 

In all the panic there was no noticed evidence of angelic intervention, apart from Jaoel’s heavy breathing, the strong scent of rosemary, and Hanna’s lack of bullet holes. 

Darcy lunged forwards towards Rochester, grabbing his shirt sleeves, pulling them down, and tying them together into makeshift cuffs. For his part, he didn’t resist, but held his limbs limply, humming noncommittally at the sudden development. Two guards fired on Darcy without a pause for thought, and the bullets disappeared into atoms somewhere between their guns and the object of Jaoel’s concentration. 

Rochester looked unsurprised by Darcy’s sudden move, and unsurprised by the lack of bullet holes in the both of them, as though angelic feats of impossibility happened regularly for him. He stood still without struggling, staring over his shoulder at his bound hands thoughtfully. 

“Names! Not numbers! Names! Not numbers!” The cry was quickly took up, and then the confused crowd was moving with purpose in many different directions, before a permanent marker was discovered, and a blissfully safe mission of adding each person’s name to their sleeping bay was introduced, taking away a large group of people. 

Daisy followed Jessica, who was still brandishing her door handle, and together with the help of a worker, and the threat of the remaining angry crowd, they forced the guards backwards towards a large meeting hall that ajoined the mess hall and, just like every room in the compound, could be locked from either the outside or the inside independently. 

For a moment it seemed as though there was going to be a standoff, as one of the guards leveled his gun at the worker beside Jessica, but the remaining crowd surged and consumed him, grabbing his weapon and hitting him in the chest with it until he stumbled back and fell into step with the others, slowly backing up.

Darcy wove a silent Rochester through the crowd and Jaoel tailed them. The three of them traveled down the elevator in silence, and into Rochester’s office, the chaos above them dimming. The persisting scent of lavender did not go unnoticed by Darcy or her prisoner. 

Darcy blinked, breathing through her sleeve. “Jay,” she warned, looking him in the eyes to keep centered and avoid falling into the calming sleep hanging off of her like climbing ivy. Rochester turned from her to Jaoel, and said directly, “you’re an angel.”

Again Darcy could see the soldier in him. He stood up straight, carefully voiding his face of emotion, and replied in a low but sure voice. “And you? Are you human, Mr. Rochester?” The old man blinked at him, dazed from the lavender. “Yes.”

They entered the office, and Jaoel sat him in the desk chair. Darcy watched, her eyes flickering to Jay every three breaths to maintain her mental clarity. “Who are the people who were in the basements? Why did you have them down there?” Jaoel asked evenly. 

“I’m preparing. I’m trying to be ready. To understand.” Jaoel leaned over him. “To be ready for what?” 

Mr. Rochester looked afraid, the effects of the angelic truth magic stripping him of his false surety. “The apocalypse. The end of days.”

Darcy spoke, and violently. “How did you know? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Jaoel peered at him, adding on before he could answer, “do you have visions?”

Rochester shook his head. “My Glass Girl does.” Jaoel reprimanded him. He was telling the truth, a truth he understood, but that didn’t mean it translated into a truth others could understand. “My daughter….” he began, then shook his head, “no. That was the other one. This one came next but she’s the same. Same visions. Except she’s not strong like my girl was. She needs to be stronger to….” He stopped to smile, “I’m just trying to make her strong. She has visions. I let her draw them if she’s very good. And the angels, they tell me things. But they have this nasty minty sting to them. It hurts so much.” He nodded solemnly, but without much control, almost drunkenly. 

Jaoel looked appalled. “How do you know angels? Who is it that you know? Who would betray possibly the only imperative rule of our entire kind?” Rochester blinked up at him, eyes wide. “Well they didn’t want to know me. I just take the ones that fall. Or that escape. And they don’t want to tell me things. I make them.” It seemed almost as if Jaoel could barely control how strong he was producing his lavender spell, and quickly Rochester slipped from a dazed drunkard to nearly an innocent and confused child under the weight of it, eyes wide and honest. 

“Caelum,” Jaoel stood back from him to breath, walking a lap and away from Darcy, turning away from both her and Rochester to hide his darkened features. He would scare the villain if he had to, but he didn’t want to scare Darcy. All this talk of her dying. Hanna, who was convinced all angels with the Brand were soulless. Romaniel, who wasn’t helping his case there. The blind psychic, Rochester’s maybe child, the “glassgirl”, who had outright said he would be the one to kill Darcy, and soon. As though he could ever…. As though he’d ever even think…. 

He turned to see Darcy yanking Rochester’s jaw up, forcing him to look at her. Jaoel tried to breath through his distress, to keep his magic consistent. He felt the tendrils of the barely visible fog reach out, and secure again around Rochester’s nose, mouth, and throat. “I want you to go through the video cameras you have,” Darcy said through gritted teeth, “and tell me about each one of your human, custodi, and angelic prisoners.” 

Jaoel came to stand at her side, peering down over her shoulder, but careful not to touch her. He looked Rochester in the eyes as well, pulling his attention from Darcy. Once he was sure he had the man’s full attention, he dug his fingernails in the the flesh of his palms, and tightened the fog. He repeated what Darcy had said, then, nodding to himself, added, “and tell the truth.”


	19. A Small Matter Of Life And Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just havin a day like all I want is to already have published works with other people who've read them and are as invested in them as I am so I can talk with people about the characters that I love and ugh.... y'know?? tbh my life goal is just to write something good enough that somebody else does fan art or writes a fanfic for it like that would be the dream, y'knowwwww?? idk if this is relatable content,, anyways enjoy chapter!! Only a few more chapters left omg!!

Hanna ran on various senses of obligation. Previously she’d ran on an obligation to her family, or her church, or her community. Now she ran on a sense of obligation not so much to civility itself, but to desperately grasping to the rules of the old world as they slipped away, an obligation that encompassed civility. Whether by default or not was up for debate. 

Those who had not run to write names on doors were shuffling in an agitated sort of manner in the dining hall, conferring quietly with one another. Their self-righteous anger was understandable, but it was also dangerous. The anger wasn’t going anywhere, it was just sitting heavy over the room, festering in the pits of stomachs. And Hanna didn’t know what to do about it. 

But somebody in the crowd went to violently push another, Hanna’s obligation pulled her upright onto a table. And with a panic she stretched onto her tiptoes to yell. 

“Hey! Take it down a notch, idiot! Just. Because. Something. Bad. Is. Happening. Doesn’t. Mean. You. Can. Behave. Any. Differently. Than. Normal. And I hope we can all agree that our normal should be being kind, caring human beings because if we’re anything short of that then God save us, because we won’t get through this.” She surveyed the crowd with uncharacteristically wild eyes, before continuing, “I get it, somebody just revealed an unpleasant truth to you. It turned your world upside down and now your sense of faith and surety has been ruptured. Probably too soon after a similar thing happened when we lost what we knew of the world. And I’m not going to tell you to get over it, I get it, I do. That’s so understandably upsetting.” And now the room was quiet, listening. 

“But we are better than chaos. We’re humanity, and we will react like we always do in times of upheaval. Some of us will give in, but most of us, most of us will rise up, and help,” Hanna paused, biting her lip, before foraging ahead, “until it’s decided who should be in charge, and we’ve discovered exactly what Rochester was lying to us about, we can still act like sensible people. Most of you are adults. None of us here need somebody telling us what to do to act with kindness and intelligence. We like that security, but we don’t need it. To those who work important jobs within the compound: just because nobody is explicitly telling you when and how to do your jobs, or promising you the reward of whatever payment method Rochester has been using, that doesn’t mean your jobs don’t still need to be done. We need to eat tonight, so somebody needs to cook. We are fully capable of continuing to conduct ourselves like human beings.”

The murmers of anger turned to a mixture of murmers ofdissent and murmurs of agreement, and Hanna proposed: “Leave this as the meeting hall for organizing the accomplishing of tasks within the compound, but don’t wait here for direction becoming more agitated. I will call everybody within the compound here if I have important news of Rochester or those healing from the basements. But more importantly: I welcome any of you to do the same. If you need help with something, or are offering advice, or news you deem important. I promise I won’t wait to address you with news if I have any.”   
She paused a moment, perhaps to revel in the fact the neither Darcy nor Jessica would’ve promised that. “Tonight, at dinner, we can talk future. If dinner is made.”

Hanna shook as she hopped from the table, and beelined for the elevator. She had something Darcy needed to know about.

****************

Rochester was fervently shaking his head, “no, no, that one didn’t come to me broken…. He-- he signed up, with no reasons, didn’t ask for money, didn’t ask for anything. Just told me it was what he was meant to be doing. I just needed somebody to try fallen blood on, and he looked good enough.”  
Darcy seemed to be incapable of completing an interrogation without violence, despite the fact that Rochester couldn’t lie. She hit him over the back of the head. “What does that mean?” 

“I had an angel, a fallen angel, one that had been on the run from heaven, but it escaped. I…. I still had vials of blood that I had taken from it for study, and I injected it’s blood into human people. Mostly those I’d bribed, or made some sort of deal with. Six people. He was the only one of the six to volunteer, and he was the only one to survive.”

There was a knock on the door, and Hanna let herself in quietly, scanning the screens. She cleared her throat, but Rochester was still talking.   
“You shouldn’t allow this man near civilians. He is a weapon,” Rochester finished, unprompted. “What motivates you to say this?” Jaoel asked.   
“I fear for my own life.”

Out of the brief silence, Hanna spoke up. “Darcy?” All three of them turned. “I…. I think I know one of them, as insane as that sounds. He…. well, I think he, he’s dead. Or rather he died.” She pointed at the top right screen where an old video feed played. “I think I’ve attended his funeral.”

The room was again silent, as the four regarded one another. The man Hanna was pointing out, he was the same man Rochester had been talking about. “Could it be a coincidence?” Darcy asked aloud, “somebody who looks like him?” at the same time Jaoel said, “we’re dealing with a plan supposedly laid out by heaven, Darcy.” 

“So…. No coincidence?” Darcy replied quietly. “Not even a twin separated at birth? Or funeral that happened to be fake for normal reasons?” 

“What normal reasons would this man have for faking his own funeral?” Jaoel argued tiredly. 

“Shut up,” Hanna growled, “sorry…. Just…. Shut up, please. God, do you two always do this when there are lives, or possible ghosts I suppose, on the line?” 

“Yeah.”

“There’s something off about him,” Hanna pressed on, “just, shut up for a minute because-- Oh.” She glanced up at the screen. “How old does he look do you?”   
“I don’t know….. 19? 20?” Darcy replied, peering up at him. Hanna exhaled. “Yeah. He’d just turned twenty when he…. And I was twelve. So that was six years ago.” Onscreen, the prisoner from two days ago, was mumbling something. 

“You think he’s not really human?” Jaoel asked, before turning to Rochester, “what’s his name?” Lavender. As they spoke Darcy mouthed along to what he was mumbling on screen. “Yes, my lord. It must be done.” 

“I don’t know. He never told me,” Rochester replied, “that was his one condition. His file says John Doe. Funny, too, because I never let that slide with anyone. I always run background checks and all that. I know everything about the people here. But the day I let him in for preliminary testing…. That day is funny too. I can’t remember it too well.”

“Christian,” Hanna said quietly, “his name is Christian. Christian Morris. His sister’s name was Imani. His mother’s name was Jazmin.”

*******

“I’m going to talk to him…. whether you come or not,” Hanna threw over her shoulder. She had to know. This wasn’t a coincidence. But she had to know whether someone or some angel had done this, or if the universe truly did have it out for her. 

Darcy trotted up beside her. “I feel like this is some opposites day universe where you’re doing exactly what I like to do,” she complained to Hanna, “and it’s infuriating.” Hanna laughed distractedly. They entered the dining hall, and Hanna slowed only to make sure Caroline was still there. 

She was. And she was helping Daisy throw a tablecloth over one of the benches so one of the prisoners could sit down there and get patched up. Pride bloomed in Hanna’s chest. Crashtest and Disney arrived at their side, swamping Darcy with questions and concerns. 

Hanna tugged on Disney’s sleeve, demanding his attention. “Do you know where they sent the prisoner named Christian?” For a moment Disney blinked at her.  
“Who?”

“Tall guy, lanky, dark features, tattoo on his collarbone,” Hanna huffed impatiently. “He went to the empty room assigned to him, down with our rooms,” Disney said finally. Darcy had gotten caught up in something Crashtest was lamenting, and Hanna nodded quickly at Disney, angling her head towards the two of them. “If she looks up and realizes I left without her, tell her where I went.”

“Will do.”

Travelling through the compound was especially chilling alone. Hanna walked quickly down the hall to the only open bay door, arms wrapping protectively around her stomach. 

He jolted as she came into view, blocking the hallway light and casting a shadow over his form, huddled in a corner of the bay. 

“Most of the others rushed to spend time with the people upstairs,” she blurted out, forgetting the words she’d practiced, “rushed to get food, and medical help. Why are you down here?” He shrugged, not looking her in the eye, arms wrapped around his knees. She sighed, and just by bringing to mind the first word, she launched into the speech she prepared. “Mr. Rochester has been moved out of power. What he’s done is awful. We want to help you. Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

He shrugged again, and waited a moment. After realizing she wasn’t leaving until she got some sort of answer, Christian croaked out. “Dunno. What’s the date today?” She told him quietly. “I’ve been here six months,” she managed, surprised. 

“Do…. Do you know what’s happened to the world?” Hanna inquired tentatively. What if he doesn’t know. What if none of the prisoners know? She thought, what if I have to break the news to them that there is no outside world left to go back to?

“What’s happened to the world?” Christian asked, then coughed.   
“It kind of…. Ended.”

“Oh,” he managed, after his coughing had subsided, “yeah. I knew about that.”

Hanna kneeled, so she was less backlight, and caught his eyes. “Do you…. Do you know your name?” she asked, “do you know where you come from? How you got here?” 

He shook his head. “No. Do I know you?” She swallowed a lump in her throat and he cursed. “I’m guessing I do know you and I’m sorry I don’t remember. Were we friends? Relatives? Lovers? I…. I really am sorry, I mean I think maybe you could be familiar but I don’t really….”

“No,” Hanna pressed, “I’m sorry. And no, I remember your face, but you wouldn’t remember mine. Look, whatever happened to you or me any anybody in the past doesn’t matter. But I think the circumstances of your being here might hold a clue to a bigger puzzle. And I hate to dangle my knowledge over you, that’s not my intention, but I don’t want to cloud up your brain with my memories, especially when we so desperately need your memories, unbiased and truthful. 

"So…. Do you remember anything before being here?”

“I remember…. Two different somethings actually,” he blinked, cocking his head, and looking up. “I remember living on a long street, that went down to the center of the city, where it was windy and cold and and there was a street sign….. Damn, I can’t remember. But I also remember living on a dead end street, a cul de sac, right next to a bridge and there were the railroad tracks two streets over and one street down, and a park, and the river. And it was always hot outside and we didn’t have a porch so we’d lay on the floor inside with all the windows open. God, there had to be street signs there too but I don’t remember. Hanna? I’m sorry, did I upset you?”

“Right next to the bridge. Where the cars rattled overhead all the time, even at night,” she replied, “do you remember being out under that bridge at night? The Woodrow Wilson bridge. It was the Wilson bridge. On August twenty fourth. Do you remember?” 

For a moment Hanna thought he’d fallen asleep, but the he gasped for a breath of air, and she realized he’d barely been breathing, his eyes squeezed shut. He looked up and their eyes met, Hanna still backlit, and the light from behind her swarming around and hitting the gathering tears on his bottom lashline. “I died. 

I died on August twenty fourth,” he whispered. 

Hanna clenched her jaw, desperate not to say anything that would help shape his memory. She needed to know what he remembered. “I’m Christian,” he   
whispered desperately to her, “I’m Christian and I died.”


	20. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow-- consistency in posting schedule really aint my forte y'all, I'm so sorry. Again, the biggest thanks and all the hugs for anybody who's reading and extra biggest thanks and hugs for anybody who's commented or agreed to give feedback to me. Y'all are amazing, this project means the world to me, and so do you!! thanks <3<3

[click.]

[RECORDING]

Darcy:

Alright, I suppose before I go through with this, and tell you the rest of the story, I should tell you how it happened the day of the Wave.   
You see, the base of the problem was stuff I thought I didn’t need. When you find something you think you don’t need anymore, you either throw into the back of your closet or you just throw out. The day of the Wave I had a pack full of survival equipment. It was in my room, at the back of my closet. But I was not. I was at school with just my messenger bag, books, several granola bars, a half-pack of gum, red lipstick and a swiss army knife from my dad. 

Not a clean pair of socks in sight. 

I’m not religious. I have nothing against people who are, I’m just… Not. My dad never pushed it on me. He believed in angels— we used to have little stone ones around the house and the shop (which makes a hell of a lot more sense now that I know about my mom), but he didn’t…. Doesn’t believe in God. 

So I’m not religious. I’m just… Not. Even on that day, even if God had just decided to end the world, I didn’t believe in certain things. Not then, especially not now. Not in religion, not in fate, not even in “some things happen for a reason”. Because there was no reason or logic or pattern to who lived and those who died on the day of the Wave.   
Mr. David saved my life. As of now I’m still not sure his connection to Rochester‘s business, how he knew. 

There was an early dismissal that day, announced before students had even begun walking to their first class. The entire school population was standing around waiting for the first bell to ring, drinking coffee, doing homework they should have done the night before. And school was announced as dismissed. The phones started blowing up around 8:45, but I didn’t see because at precisely 8:30 Mr. David rounded up every kid with detention for the next month and told them to sit down in his classroom. Then, and unlike every other stuffy and horrible time he’d subjected students to his outdated method of punishment and stared at them for a full hour, he stood up and left the room, closing the door behind him.   
The first thing I did was rush to the window and stick my phone out of it for cell reception. Hilariously, or perhaps horribly, my first thought upon seeing 10 missed texts from Ace was that he was finally breaking up with me. And I was so relieved. How trivial to think now, whether we were dating or not— when now…. when he’s now…. 

Ace: Darcy, where are you right now? Pick up your phone. Darcy, they’re talking about this wave, like a tsunami. Japan is underwater. 

Disney: Darcy, where are you? Darcy. Darcy. Darcy. Darcy. Darcy. 

Naturally, though the thought of Ace Diesel and Disney Duncan working together was highly unlikely under any circumstances, I thought they were pranking me. Until my dad texted me something very similar. 

There was panic. The province of British Columbia released the news at 8:15– seven whole minutes after the state of Washington. 

Every parent was on the phone to their kid. I bolted out of Mr. David’s room, just as he shoved two more kids forcibly into it. At the time I was indignant. How DARE he care about detention at a time like this? I narrowly ducked his grasp and sprinted for the cafeteria, sending Ace the last text I would ever send. “Ace, where ARE you?” I was hitting send when the shaking started.   
It was a rumbling at first, and then the tiles began to heave in earnest. I dropped my phone, then dropped to the floor after it, scrambling under a table to hold the back of my neck. Disney!! I needed my phone back, I needed to get a hold of Diz. 

But I grew up in BC, school earthquake drills were ingrained into me. Things fell off shelves, something broke and glass shards shot under the table towards me. Somebody screamed. I stayed where I was and closed my eyes to count the seconds, incredulously. 

I should’ve known it wasn’t right. The shaking stopped abruptly, then started just as abruptly, too fast to be an aftershock. Earthquakes didn’t behave like that.   
Five minutes later Disney stumbled into the room. The shaking stopped. And started again. I managed to get to my feet, grabbing the table’s edge, and he fell against me. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Why are you asking me?”

“Is this an earthquake?” 

I regarded him incredulously and said something along the lines of “YES, DUH”, except perhaps not as nice. 

“There’s a tsunami coming,” he said glancing out the window at the sliver of ocean blurrily visible. “If it’s a tsunami off of this, we’re screwed,” I shot back. The shaking stopped again. 

“Why are you still here?” I gasped trying to right myself. The shaking started again and we both grabbed for the table edge. “Anxiety attack,” he managed, “you?”

“Detention,” I responded quickly. The shaking stopped and I counted 30 seconds of stillness before taking a deep breath. That was 17 intervals of shaking. 

“Darcy, what do we do?” The kids from Mr. David’s room had joined us. “We… We have to get to high ground. In the event of a tsunami. So.. Text everyone. Get them to go to safety.”  
“The phones are dead.” I looked down in surprise to find mine cracked and indeed dead. “Ace, where ARE you”.

“Then we yell at anyone who will listen. C’mon, Diz, you and me. Tell anyone who will listen they need to get to high ground. Let’s get these kids to safety.”


	21. To Introduce Our Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of AFTER (book one) omg I'm working on book two right now but this has been a crazy awesome journey, thanks to all of you for your support

POV Almighty:

It begins with a long hallway. Hurricane Darcy stands at one end of it, Rogziel’s prized soldier Jaoel at the other. Far away his brother cries out-- at least that’s how Romaniel will like to tell the story later. There has to be a hero after all-- and perhaps that hero will now be him.

“You’re sure?” Jaoel asks, raising his right arm slowly. His index and middle finger are pointed straight out, his thumb above his hand, in the shape of a gun. Darcy pauses, opening her mouth, suddenly looking very small, and says, “Jay?”

Jaoel squeezes down his thumb, and the report of something very similar to gunfire shaking the compound level, echoing through every room. 

Six Hours Earlier

[click] 

[RECORDING] 

Romaniel (speaking directly into the recorder): o-kay, you are tuning in to a surveyance of the surveillance cameras tonight, at the Seato Compound, Florida. With, of course, yours truly, Romaniel. 

Let’s see…. Gardens, boring. Bathrooms, ew. Mess hall…. Hmmm…. I guess somebody found Brackwater’s Bitch a nice bathtub to stay hydrated in. How nice. And-- aw-- Jessica’s all curled up in a blanket by her side, that’s adorable! I agree, I agree, I ship it…. 

[from the surveillance camera screen] 

Caroline: Miss Jess?

Jessica: Why are you out of bed?

Caroline: Jus’ walkin’ around. Couldn’t sleep. I’m not scarda th’ dark, see, I’m not scarda anythin’. Jus’ wanted to let you know, my best friend’s a mermaid too.

Romaniel: Excuse me, bitch? “Friend”? Don’t stomp all over my ship! 

Caroline: …. And, um, I was wonderin’ if I could ask Miss Nadia about if maybe she knows my mermaid friend, I need to find him see….

Romaniel: *Sigh* Irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant, ew…. Irrelevant-- Oh! If you’re wondering how Hanna’s dinner speech went: it didn’t. She didn’t speak at all and now everybody’s antsy and confused and I’m STUCK UP HERE IN THE SECURITY ROOM WITH NO AEDYN AND NO WIFI AND NO FUCKING WAY TO HELP! If I’ve got a little bit of buffer time before Rogziel realizes he needs to get around to killing me, and THIS is not what I want to spend it on.

Romaniel: Irrelevant, irrelevant…. 

Romaniel: And of course identical hallway camera number 47 pointed at identical hallway 47 has us tuning into God Girl, and her frankly pathetic search for God Girl Two, who was in…. The Library? With a Lead Pipe? No, no, I’m sorry I meant in the Mess Hall, with a lesbian mermaid. 

Romaniel: Ooh! Fallen-angel-blood-prisoner-victim-guy…. What’s his name..? Christian! What are you doing out and about? I thought Jaoel locked you in a room! Oh, right! Jaoel locked you in a room, and Jaoel is completely INCOMPETENT. 

(Still) Romaniel: Hanna whirled around in the quiet hallway, cheeks flushing, heart racing. There it was again, the face of her mysterious long lost--

Hanna: What the hell?! Why are you out of your room? 

Christian: Because I was under the impression that it was, in fact, a room. And not just another cell. Why are you yelling?

Romaniel: Hanna stared into his deep, starry night eyes, that held the secrets of the--

Hanna: Sorry, I shouldn’t yell. And you’re right, it’s not a cell. But the others have all retired to their rooms for the night, and for everybody’s peace of mind, until we can make sure you’re not a danger to the people here, and they’re not a danger to you--

Christian: I remember you. I’m sorry. Really. But….I didn’t before, and now I do, I remember you. Younger. But the same. I remember so many other faces, and yours is just this little girl, in a school uniform, outside playing pickup soccer on the street with…. There are other kids, I just can’t remember them.

Romaniel: Hanna could not believe the change in his demeanor. Perhaps he was not as damaged as she had thought…. Oooooohf wait a second, like actual little girl? Nevermind, nevermind we don’t stan this. 

Hanna: Good. Do you remember anything else about yourself, Christian? Who are you? Where are you from? Do you remember your full name? 

Christian: No. I’m sorry. Just the first name. Just Christian. Will you please tell me how I know you, how I know the other people, the other faces? 

Hanna: I need you to tell me. You need to figure that out yourself. 

Christian: Then I’m sorry, Hanna. I don’t remember yet. I-- I’ll go back to my room. Goodnight. 

Romaniel: Okay on with our search…. Braces is just helping a few of the old basement prisoners write their names on their doors. The coherent ones anyways. What an absolute angel, that boy. I’M ROLLING MY EYES. 

Romaniel: Irrelevant, irrelevant… Oh, FINALLY. THERE HE IS. At least he fell asleep, and stopped his damn fidgeting, while I’m locked up here in the Caelum-forsaken room…. Speaking of which, are you listening? Caelum? Because this wasn’t what I asked for. This feeling? This pain? I asked you for for FREEDOM, I PRAYED TO YOU, and I feel anything but free. 

[several minutes of silence]

Romaniel: Oh, look, my idiot not-brother, Jerald. And his idiot not-lover, Fangs. Don’t they look just adorable cuddling? Well, okay, maybe they’re on opposite sides of the room, Darcy clutching a knife, but at least she asked dear Jerome for protection, keeping the door to her little room open and what have you. There’s hope for his pathetic little heart yet. 

Romaniel: Oh good, they’re coming back to interrogate me…. Finally, I was getting bored. 

[click]

[RECORDING]

Darcy: Telling the whole story like this…. It makes it seem like I’m not coming back. Like this plan won’t work. I’m coming back. We’re coming back. If not for me, then we’re coming back for Acacia, okay? 

[Hanna: Hell, I’d like to come back just for me too.]

*Laughter*

Darcy: Well then. For you and Acacia. I mean, we’re trying to save the human race here, and just the two of you compose, what, 25% of it now? 

[Hanna: Don’t be so morbid!]

*Laughter*

Darcy: Alright…. Bye for now.

[click.]

In one of Mr. Rochester’s cellblock rooms slept the always wakeful Hurricane Darcy. Kalaziel Jaoel was awake, watching her, his back upright against the automatic door frame. Her back was turned to him, his bare foot pressed to the small of her back both to ensure that he cannot move on her without her detecting the change in his position, and to ensure that he cannot leave her locked in the sleeping compartment, which she calls the “deathbox cellblock sleeping square”. 

Her lungs fluttered under that pad of his foot. Hurricane Darcy rolled over, never peaceful, but watchful, staring up at Jaoel with sleep-filled eyes. Jaoel had been going over English in his mind, trying to think of a more era-appropriate greeting than hello. “Yo”, is that outdated? ‘Sup’? 

She’s blinked herself fully awake and he managed, “Good morning, m’lady.” 

Her eyes narrowed, and, frowning, she responded, “I’m still mad at you, just so you know.” He nodded graciously, and let that cover the hurt that flashed across his features. 

Darcy stood, dusting off her pants, and said, with a good deal of blushing and throat-  
clearing and stalling, “but….. thank you, Jay.”

Jaoel nodded again. Darcy inhaled for longer than was necessary, thinking. “I want to call a meeting. I want to interrogate Romaniel more.” Jaoel laughed, somewhat bitterly, “I have no objection to subjecting Romaniel to any and all forms of torture, if that’s what you’re asking.” Darcy sighed “do you have to talk like a living incarnate of the oxford dictionary?”

“Romaniel rebelled against Rogziel,” Jaoel pressed on, choosing his words carefully, “and yes, Rogziel is the real evil, but Romaniel is no hero, do you understand?” Darcy squinted at him, “believe me, Jay. I don’t like him.” 

[RECORDING] 

Darcy: This is the second interrogation of Sotersal Romaniel. Our goal today is to understand the best option for the survival of what is left of the human race. 

Aedyn: Romaniel. Are you…. Um…. You’ve been alone all night. Do you need food or….? 

[a short laugh]

Romaniel: No. I do not require human food. 

Aedyn: Okay, good…. ’Cause we weren’t going to give you any anyway.

Romaniel: Very scary, thank you Aedyn. 

Darcy: First question, please. 

Aedyn: If we decide to perform the ritual Almighty was attempting, to achieve a council seat, what will that win us? 

Jaoel: Hold on. Doing that requires a person with angelic and human blood in their system! There are two I know, Darcy, and Disney for about another 48 hours! And it requires the blood of a   
child! Darcy! 

Hanna: …. Um, yes. And a half custodi. I can’t say I’m all for that plan. 

Darcy: For argument’s sake! 

Aedyn: Romaniel?

Romaniel: Not much. Almighty wanted to get a seat to prove a political point. She disapproves of the annihilation of humanity. But she’s willing to use it as a martyr of sorts, a rolling stone set   
into motion to help the next race. 

Darcy: HOLD ON! Like, “Try 18” kind of next race? 

Aedyn: Try 18? 

Romaniel: Yes. I suppose they would be called Chimans. 

Darcy: That sneaky bitch! She doesn’t care about us! 

Romaniel: Actually, she does care. She would like to see humanity survive. She just doesn’t care on such an…. Individual level. 

Aedyn: Say we got a seat. Made that “political point”?

Romaniel: You’re not tipping any tides. The Angelic Council has 50 representatives, they need 30 votes in favour to terminate a race. They had 42. 

Darcy: Do we really suck that much?

Aedyn: Um…. Do we?

Romaniel: Bribery. Corruption. Rogziel’s military force owns the council, as well as its leader and king, Zaapaliel. Many speculate he did it for a change of scenery. But you guys DID invent nuclear weapons, host hundreds of genocides, have two world wars--

Darcy: Okay, yeah, I get it. We suck. 

Aedyn: How do we win then? It sounds like you don’t like these “Rogziel and Zaapaliel” much more than we do. 

Romaniel: Well, since there’s no way to-- it’s impossible-- I’m going to ignore that question. 

Darcy: Well, since you’re shaking and beginning to cry a little, I’m going to assume that’s a lie. 

Aedyn: Romaniel. Tell us. Please. 

Romaniel: You remember how I said you could recreate Rogziel’s spell, but backwards? But that you’d need one of every species that came before you? 

Aedyn: Yeah. I remember that part. 

Romaniel: Well, that was sort of a lie. Kind of. Not really. See, species one through ten, they’re gone. Their souls have moved on. Back then, Almighty was in charge, and there was a…. Way of   
things. Zaapaliel took over after try ten, and he’s…. well…. an incompetent idiot. A dangerous, deadly, incompetent idiot. Nobody has moved on to the life after this one, not really. They’re in this   
place…. Echo. 

Darcy: So…. Heaven? Hell?

Romaniel: Neither. It’s just…. A bullshit holding place. Rather than admitting his inability to contact the… 

Aedyn: ….Contact the…. what?

Romaniel: There’s no english word for them. Let’s see. We’re “Heaven”. Let’s call Zaap and Almighty’s superiors “Higher Heaven”. He can’t contact Higher Heaven and get any information about   
where to send souls to actually move on. Thus: he created Echo. Look-- I’ve never been to Echo, but I’ve heard it’s quite…. Dull. 

Hanna: Hold on. You’re telling me this is where people, our people, go when they die? 

Romaniel: Yes, and races eleven through sixteen. 

Darcy: And you want us to break into Echo and steal people from eleven through sixteen to participate in a ritual to help kill Rogziel? Break into the afterlife? 

Aedyn: Romaniel?

Romaniel: Yeah. The only way to put a dent in Rogziel’s empire is to put one in his skull. 

Darcy: Okay, just checking. 

Aedyn: Can we do that? Steal people from death? 

Romaniel: Yes…. From Zaapaliel’s shit version of death. But not just SOME people. You’d have to be dumb enough to open the gates between Echo and Earth, and that would bring EVERYBODY through. Seven races of people. All the dead. 

Darcy: Oh, yeah. SURE. No problem. 

Aedyn: how? 

Romaniel: ….

[sickly coughing]

Darcy: HOW?!

Aedyn: how? 

Romaniel: Die. 

Darcy: Rude. 

Romaniel: No, die. The only way into Echo, is through death. Getting there is all too easy for humans. You’re so…. Fragile. 

Darcy: And how do we get out? Or…. Open the gate?

Romaniel: Okay. Here we go…. Two locks, one on earth, under the ocean and protected by the Custodi King naturally. Gotta be opened by blood that’s been in Echo. So…. I don’t know. Somebody who’d had a near-death experience? Or been legally dead? The deep lore on this is not in english and a little hard to translate or even…. Understand in general. Other gate is in Echo, gotta be opened by blood that’s been on earth, so slightly easier. Yes, halfling blood is fine, Fangs. And, once the gates have been opened on both sides, whoever you send in will be able to get out. That is, presuming you can open both gates. Problem is…. Remembering. Once you’re in Echo, once you…. Die, you forget stuff. But I can follow whoever you send in, make sure they stay on task. 

Darcy: Jaoel can follow me in. Hey, Romaniel, human blood will work right? Even though we’re but an insignificant failuristic drop in a vast failuristic sea? 

Aedyn: Answer her. 

Romaniel: It just has to be blood that’s not from a full angel, or full Custodi. Angels can go there anyway, and it wouldn’t do to have us messing with Zaapy’s doorway between life and death. Custodi used to have the keys, but they’ve had….. Uprisings, in the past, and Rogziel doesn’t trust them to function as much more than confused slaves. So, yes, humans weren’t included in the list of people who can’t open the portal to the afterlife because you’re such insignificant drops Rogziel figured he didn’t have to worry about you. 

Darcy: Thanks, Roman. That was complementary and offensive at the same time. 

Romaniel: Anytime. So: am I free to go? 

Darcy: Um…. no. You’ll be free to go when the world is back to normal. 

Romaniel: You misunderstand me then, Fangs. The world is never going to go back to “normal”. If, by some miracle, you turn Rogziel, leader of heaven, into a powerless human, I kill him, you overthrow the Angelic Court with a threadbare team of high-anxiety teenagers, and convince the powers that be-- “Higher Heaven”-- that all this bloodshed proves humanity’s worth, allowing your lives to be spared instead of you all being smited off the ground you stand on…. Then you’ll be alive, but you’ll be facing an empty world with no heaven, and a heaven with no leader. Do you, a sixteen-year-old human girl, know how to re-organize two newly devastated civilizations?

Darcy: No. But I do know I don’t like Rogziel, and I intend to find somebody better suited to govern than him. 

Romaniel: What? Like you?

[screeching of a chair on metal flooring]

Jaoel: DARCY!!

[breathing] 

Hanna: Hey, hey, hey! Darcy! If I may interrupt, I have a tidbit of prevalent information. Christian Morris, from Rochester’s collection? He’s died before. 

****

The New Plan To Save The World:

(Or What’s Left Of It)

Hanna, Nadia and Christian go to the Custodi Gate   
(located in the mariana trench, naturally) and open it:  
-Hanna (Half-Mermaid)  
-Nadia (Custodi, used to be in the Hunt, knows way around capital)   
-Christian (Has died before and therefore can open portal)

Darcy goes to the Echo Gate. Jaoel will find Darcy and help her remember:  
-Jaoel (Angel)  
-Darcy (Stupid enough to sign up for a bullet in her head)

Hanna will explain to the millions of dead people that they need to follow her into heaven to wage war. 

Simple. 

****

POV Almighty:

It begins with a long hallway. Hurricane Darcy stands at one end of it, Rogziel’s prized soldier Jaoel at the other. Far away his brother cries out that it’s a fool’s mission to open the Doors of the Dead-- at least that’s how Romaniel will like to tell the story later. There has to be a hero after all-- and perhaps that hero will now be him-- as Hurricane Darcy has lost her head and is about to lose her brains. 

“Darcy we can wait. You can sleep a night first. You can--” She interrupts Jaoel. “I want it painless and I want it now. Let’s do this.”

“You’re sure?” Jaoel asks, raising his right arm slowly. His index and middle finger are pointed straight out, his thumb above his hand, in the shape of a gun. “Yes.” “Okay.” Darcy pauses, opening her mouth, suddenly looking very small, and says, “Jay?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t fucking miss.”

Jaoel squeezes down his thumb, and the report of something very similar to gunfire shaking the compound level, echoing through every room.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING I LOVE YOU ALSO i'm hoping to post a chapter every wednesday going forwards so look out for more coming soon :)


End file.
